03/06/2026
It's a little weird for Corgan to allege a conspiracy here, when he was a major example of swapping out the rock band for bedroom-produced electronic sounds in 1997 (first Eye, and then Adore).
Same year Radiohead amped up the intricate production: OK Computer doesn't sound like The Bends, though they wouldn't go full knob-tweaker until Kid A in 2000.
As an astrologer, I can't help but notice that's the year Neptune moved from Capricorn into Aquarius. Neptune is a planet that's associated with mass media and art movements. This move was a major shift: from larger-than-life rock bands with occult gatekeeper producers to computer software that allowed anyone to polish their own music on their own terms. Not long after, Napster started the new paradigm of private playlists and viral promotion, rather than radio play and album sales.
I did some research and followed Neptune through the signs for hundreds of years, back to baroque music, and I'll publish an article about it next week. Maybe it will help us know what to expect from the new cycle with Neptune just moved into Aries. Tiktok protest singers? Pirate punk shows? Participatory parlour music?
Billy Corgan made these remarks on The Magnificent Others, his long-form interview podcast, in a February 25, 2026 episode with writer and cultural commentator Conrad Flynn. It was the first time Corgan had invited a guest back for a second appearance in the show's history.
Flynn, the grandson of Wild Wild West actor Robert Conrad and Hollywood publicist Harry Flynn, runs a Substack called The Flynn Effect focused on secret histories in entertainment, politics, and culture. The two-part conversation covers CIA influence on 1960s counterculture, occult symbolism in the music industry, and the mechanics of how cultural dominance shifts between genres.
Corgan's claim about MTV is specific. He is not describing a gradual drift. He is describing a deliberate institutional decision he says he witnessed firsthand in 1997 and 1998, when rock was still commercially dominant and was replaced almost overnight by rap, accompanied by an immediate change in what the network's standards and practices department would permit on air.
When Corgan says "some people assert the CIA was involved," he doesn't name names. But the conversation sits inside a documented tradition. Flynn followed up the episode on his Substack by pointing to earlier examples of intelligence agency involvement in music: music critic Henry Pleasants in the 1950s, Miles Copeland III in the 1980s who managed The Police and ran IRS Records while maintaining direct family ties to the CIA, and documented government attempts to shape culture through bands like Blood Sweat and Tears in the 1970s. Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, a friend of Corgan's, said in 2013 that Britpop felt like a government push and that he wanted to see the MI5 files on it.
The full episode is available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms.
