10 Banned Hard Rock Music Videos
5. The Smashing Pumpkins -Try, Try, Try
Jonas Åkerlund is a director who has no issues taking on tough subject matters or extreme visuals. Before working with The Smashing Pumpkins he previously directed the notorious Smack My Bitch Up video for The Prodigy and would go on to work with Rammstein many times over (hold that thought).
Åkerlund’s story in Try, Try, Try by The Smashing Pumpkins is not one of shock value or gratuitousness for gratuitousness' sake.
The video follows a homeless couple, struggling with major drug addiction, trying to survive on the streets amidst prostitution and theft. In love and expecting child, it’s a harrowing watch to see Linda continually drinking despite her pregenancy and the video concludes, after injecting heroin, with Mark finding Linda in a hospital room having had a miscarriage. Dark, sad and hauntingly real.
The version that made air is melancholy enough but the original cut of the video, that MTV refused to play, was fifteen minutes long. Linda breaks up parts of the song with dialogue that poetically tells us of her plights and the ending sees Mark arriving too late to find both his child and his partner dead.
There are videos that are too hot or violent for TV but The Smashing Pumpkins are true to themselves by crafting something that is “too depressing for TV”.