Identify/Stigmata Soundtrack
"Back in the day, people used to write songs that were directly connected to a movie's score," Corgan said. "The music for 'Identity' came from one of the love scenes in the movie."
Sonicnet 7/1999
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"I knew he was doing a soundtrack, and when he said, 'There's a song I've written, and I was thinking of you. Do you think you might want to sing it?' I was like, 'Whoa. For sure.' But after the party I forgot about it completely. I didn't want to get my hopes up in case it didn't happen."
Natalie Imbruglia - Rolling Stone Online 7/30/99
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Addicted To Noise: They don't tell you, 'We don't hear a single here'?
Corgan: Yeah. It wasn't that hard. There were definitely moments where they ... there was one scene in particular, which is a kind of Stockhausen-inspired piece [of music], and I knew that they wanted something more scary and obvious. And I did this thing that was very atmospheric and the director didn't like it. He said, 'I don't really think this is gonna work.' I said, 'This is what I hear, this is what I see. If you want something different you should get the other guy to do it. I can tell you I can't really make changes in this scene because I feel very strongly about this piece of music.' And lo and behold, there it is in the movie.
Addicted To Noise: Which song is that?
Corgan: It's called "Distrbnce." But in other cases, there was a scene where she [Patricia Arquette's character] had this weird dream vision of herself dropping a baby in the street. It was initially extremely aggressive from the beginning to the end. And they came and they said, 'I think this is a bit too much and it doesn't have enough pace for the scene. We'd like to have a little more dynamic, almost like grunge rock, start loud and go down and go back up.' And I wasn't sure at first but I did it and I ended up really agreeing with them and I think it really helped the scene. No one likes to be told you didn't quite get that part right. But I think the suggestions that they made turned out for the most part to be right on the money for what was best for the movie.
Addicted To Noise: What's the piece of music called?
Corgan: I don't remember the title because they've all got funny titles.
Addicted To Noise: They're a little confusing, the titles.
Corgan: Yeah. I may have done that on purpose, I don't even know what I'm talking about. [laughs]
Addicted To Noise: The titles are very evocative, if vague. I was curious about what you were trying to say with them.
Corgan: You can essentially break down the music into six or seven themes. A lot of guys name their songs after the scene, which I think is kind of lame. I certainly didn't want to come up with 22 different pretentious titles, so I thought I'd just come up with seven pretentious titles and give them variables. But I was just trying to have some fun with it and reflect the cold German aesthetic of the music.
Addicted to Noise - 9/1/99
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Addicted To Noise: Was it your call to do the one pop song on the album with Natalie Imbruglia? I was a little surprised that it was somebody so mainstream.
Corgan: I think early on they were like, 'We definitely would like you to write a song and sing it.' I was like, 'I don't know, I feel like I've gotten a little burned by some other soundtracks that the band has done, I don't know if I really want to get into that.' Because the moment the band says yes to a soundtrack then the next thing you know, they want a video ... There's a whole other level of commitment that I don't want to make. Because it was a solo venture I didn't really feel it would be fair to try to drag the band into something that was very much my own thing. That being said, they said, 'Well, we'd really like you to do a song.' I said, 'How about if maybe I write a song? And we do it like how people used to do it in the '50s or '60s,' where you get, like, Shirley Bassey to sing "Goldfinger." So we purposely looked for a theme within the music that we were creating to turn into a pop song. And Mike had this piece of music that was commonly known as "The Love Theme," which really seemed to have a potential to turn it into a song. I took what he had and turned it into more of a four-minute pop song. When I had a skeleton of the song together, they asked who we were going to get to sing it. I definitely was writing the song from a female perspective. They said to come up with a short list of about 10 people. Of course, right away six or seven of those people, they are going 'Who's that?,' because they're not really in that world, our world.
Addicted To Noise: Like a Lori Carson or someone they might not have known?
Corgan: I shouldn't name names because I don't want anyone to feel bad because they didn't do it. There were people that you and I would know and go, 'Yeah, that would be fantastic.' But they were, 'Hmmm, we need somebody who can, for lack of a better word, identify with the movie, create a window, do a video.'
Addicted To Noise: Hence the title.
Corgan: Right, so really quickly it does get down to trying to pick people that are 'known' people to sing the song. So when we got down to that short list, Natalie was definitely one of the top three people, partially because they thought she had the right voice and the way she sings would really fit with the song. But also because I know her a little bit and I just thought she was the kind of person who would take it on. There were other big names thrown around and I think from an ego point a lot of people didn't want to do it. I don't mean it in a bad way. I just mean it's so uncommon these days for people to sing other people's songs that a lot of people almost looked at it as if it would diminish their ... star. Do you know what I'm saying?
Addicted To Noise: Singing somebody else's song is ...
Corgan: Right. Whereas for me, I would love for somebody big to dial me up and say, 'Will you sing this song?' I would be completely flattered. But I think a lot of people took it the wrong way. That's almost saying, 'We don't think you're good enough to write your own song,' or something. There's a lot of politics involved. But anyway, it turned out for the best and I'm really happy with the version she did. And it's really cool to hear your own song coming back from somebody else's ear, so to speak.
Addicted To Noise: You wrote those, with a certain mood in mind, then to have her interpret it the way that she did ...
Corgan: A lot of people I know were like 'Natalie Imbruglia?' They automatically assume someone more alternative, whatever. My mind-set is not to be exclusionary. I think it's cool to actually go that way as opposed to trying to be cool or trying to prove something. I have nothing to prove. They wanted a pop song. We wrote a nice pop song and we got somebody really great to sing a pop song, a pop singer.
Addicted To Noise: When you put it that way it makes total sense that you would get somebody who could handle that and someone people expect to sing pop songs.
Corgan: It's kind of a narrow mind-set. When you get into the movie world, they want people to see the movie. They're not hung up like we are in the alternative world about who said what and who did what. They want people to see the damn movie. All power to them. It all turned out good. I can't complain at all.
Addicted to Noise - 9/1/99
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CDNOW: There's one vocal track you did for the movie ["Identify"], but it's sung by Natalie Imbruglia. How did that come about?
Billy: "They [the movie's producer, Frank Mancuso Jr., and director Rupert Wainwright] came up with the idea of having a song, which they wanted me to sing. But I didn't want to do it, because that gets into all that other shit, like making a video, and I'm enjoying not being in the world right now [laughs].
I thought it had a female perspective, and I gave them a short list of people. Some of them were a little more "off," and they wanted a "name" person. They crossed off everyone they didn't know, and she was one of the three people they were into. I've known her for a while, and it came out pretty cool. "
CDNow - 990921