I can't be objective about this. This is one of those albums from my early teens that burrowed its way inside me and became part of my DNA. I could no sooner give it a fair rating than I could rate myself, or my adolescence, or what it means to grow up. Not every song on this album is a 5/5 -- honestly, not every song on this album is even good. Some of them seem to delight in their own ugliness. But the *variety* of music here; the ridiculous, laughable, incredible scope of it; the giddy soaring highs and the miserable vacant lows - none of the songs sounds remotely the same. I can't not give it a 5! This is less a collection of songs and more of an album of important moments to me. And there are so many of them. The defiant battle cry of "We'll crucify the insincere tonight" from Tonight, Tonight that wouldn't be out of place in an MCR song; the escalating bridge in Here is No Why that begs you to scream along; "Destroy the mind / destroy the body / but you cannot destroy the heart," which should be melodramatic dreck but feels as essential as marching orders; "Rescue me from me," perhaps the most self-aware Billy Corgan has ever been in his life; the snarling, vicious "Love is suicide" refrain in Bodies and the jacknife whiplash of Thirty-Three's sugar-spun "I know I'll make it / Love can last forever," right after it; the, again, very self aware "Suffer my desire" from In the Arms of Sleep; 1979, kicking off the slow march to the end of the album with the kind of sun-soaked, melancholy (ha!) nostalgia for things you may not even have experienced yourself; the almost silly Beautiful and Lily (My One and Only) and what I can only call a group lullaby on the last track. God, it's crazy. I love it so much. Unfortunately, it was also written by Billy Corgan, who by all accounts seems to be one of the most personally unpleasant people on the planet and has the political opinions to match. Maybe that's part of this album's appeal to me - I keep trying to crack the nut of how such a miserable, hateful prick could've made something so perfect. Maybe he poured out his heart and soul into this album and just... left them there. How do shitty people make good art? I don't know. It still doesn't make it less sincere to me. Whoever he is now or before, I believe every word he's saying here. It's part of the infinite fascination with the Infinite Sadness, I guess. Anyway. It's a mess, it's pretentious, it's painfully earnest, it's so fucking good. I totally understand the 1 star reviews. I think you either get it or you don't but I really, really do.