“Panopticon” by The Smashing Pumpkins

"Panopticon" was the second single from Oceania, the eighth Smashing Pumpkins album, going out to radio as a promo in September 2012. Billy Corgan wrote it alone, and it started the way "Quasar" did: with an opening riff the whole band believed in but nobody knew what to do with. It sat around until Corgan took it to the piano, played the chords without the rhythm and found the song hiding inside, chords he likened to Paul McCartney and Wings, even Broadway.

The part he's proudest of is the drop from D major to A minor, a swing from bright to sorrowful, almost Spanish, that changes the mood without leaving the key. NME called it "elegant and dreamy"; Consequence of Sound went with "heroic".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.