Adore by The Smashing Pumpkins

Adore, the Smashing Pumpkins' fourth studio album, came out on Virgin on June 2, 1998, and it's the sound of a band pulling the plug on its own wall of guitars. After the multi-platinum rampage of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was gone, the members were barely getting along, and Billy Corgan, who produced it, was coping with a divorce and with losing his mother. Corgan later summed it up as the work of a band coming apart.

What came out is hushed, gothic and electronica-tinged, electronic textures where the riffs used to be, with Corgan singing gently and James Iha's guitar reduced to shading. "Ava Adore" slinks and "Perfect" glides along like a sweet little synth-pop postcard. Fans split down the middle and sales fell short of the two albums before it, but critics praised the atmosphere and the grown-up songwriting, it drew the band's third straight Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance, and it has since built a cult following. It was their first album without an official drummer.

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