Imagine writing a song inspired by one of your musical heroes, getting that hero to play on a new version, and then standing beside him onstage to perform it. That’s a pretty extraordinary sequence of events, even by rock and roll standards. For Yungblud, it happened with Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, and now everyone else gets to hear the results.
Yungblud has released a special live recording of “Zombie,” captured with Corgan at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre on July 30, 2026. The performance remains the only occasion the two musicians have played their reimagined version of the song together onstage, making the recording a particularly unusual souvenir of a collaboration that already had plenty of history behind it.
The timing was almost suspiciously perfect. Yungblud was in Chicago ahead of his Lollapalooza appearance, while The Smashing Pumpkins were preparing for their own Friday night headline performance at the festival. One day before Yungblud’s set, the two artists shared the stage at the Riviera, bringing their studio collaboration into a room full of people who probably realized they were witnessing something special.
“Zombie” originally appeared on Yungblud’s chart-topping album ‘Idols’, where it quickly became one of his most successful recordings. The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song and has accumulated more than 200 million streams, making it the fastest-streaming single of his career.
Those numbers are impressive enough, but the musical connection behind the recording is arguably the more interesting story. The Smashing Pumpkins were a significant influence on the original composition, so inviting Corgan to help reshape it created the kind of collaboration that musicians spend years imagining.
And Corgan didn’t simply turn up to contribute a guitar part and disappear. The reimagined studio version was produced by Matt Schwartz and Corgan, with The Smashing Pumpkins’ Jimmy Chamberlin contributing drums and James Iha adding guitar. The result brought several of the musicians responsible for that band’s distinctive sound directly into Yungblud’s musical world.
That is a particularly satisfying bit of rock history. The influence that helped shape the song became part of the song itself, with the musicians who inspired it participating in its evolution.
Yungblud and Billy Corgan’s collaboration is a wonderful example of how rock music keeps its history alive, with one generation’s influence becoming another generation’s creative partnership.
The studio recording also received an official music video directed by Charlie Sarsfield, featuring Yungblud alongside The Smashing Pumpkins. It gave the collaboration a visual identity, but the newly released Chicago performance offers something different: two artists sharing a stage and bringing their respective musical instincts into the same moment.
There’s a special electricity to hearing a song performed by the people who helped reshape it. Studio recordings can be carefully assembled over time, with musicians adding their contributions in separate sessions. A live performance asks everyone to make the music happen together, in front of an audience, without the luxury of starting over.
The Riviera Theatre was an especially fitting setting. A venue with its own considerable musical history hosted a meeting between an artist whose career has developed in the streaming era and a musician whose band helped define alternative rock for an earlier generation.
The relationship also says something encouraging about the continued possibilities of guitar music. Yungblud has built an audience with a highly personal approach to rock, while Corgan has spent decades exploring what the genre can accommodate. Their collaboration brings those different experiences together around a song that has already connected with millions of listeners.
For Yungblud, the release adds another memorable achievement to the story of ‘Idols’. A Grammy-nominated song with more than 200 million streams now has a live recording featuring one of the musicians whose work helped inspire it in the first place.
For listeners, it’s a chance to hear a performance that happened only once, during a remarkable week for both artists in Chicago. And for anyone who has ever picked up a guitar because of a favourite band, it’s a pretty compelling reminder that musical admiration can occasionally lead somewhere extraordinary.