Billy: "I was really suicidal. I just thought it was funny to write a song that said today is the greatest day of your life because it can't get any worse."
James: "Well, Thanksgiving was cool but- well, I think Today is the greatest day." - to the audience at a concert before "Today".
James: "He's driving an ice cream truck and I'm wearing a dress." - MTV Videography.
Billy: "This next song um, was written in a very difficult period of my life. We had put out our first album Gish in 1991 and we did a tour for [applause] -yes, the tour- we did a tour for about 14 months and I think the longest we'd been on tour was about 20 days. So for all of us it was a very mind-numbing experience. It was great, but at the same we really were sort of fighting for our music and what we believed in, which in 1991 and 1992 was not as easy as it seems today. Um, so after we sort of built up all this momentum to tour on our record, um, we came back to Chicago and I was living in this very bad apartment with bad heat with a bad hippy. And I entered into probably the worst writing slump that I've ever had. I probably couldn't really reasonably write a good song for about 8 months. And um, also being in public in that particular period of my life brought out a lot of feelings I had sort of repressed from childhood you know, sort of this weird, abused-child syndrome where I locked everything away and figured "Well, I'll never have to deal with that again." Then suddenly I found myself confronted with all these demons that I thought I had locked away, and I entered into this very horrible period in my life. I eventually ended up um, even at one point sleeping on D'arcy's floor. I lived in a parking garage for a while, um, and I was completely obsessed with killing myself. It became my primary preoccupation I guess. Taking away songwriter, I became like a suicidal maniac. And um -you can laugh it's funny- and um [chuckles]...so out of the depths of this despair I sort of bottomed out and um, it literally came down to a simple decision at least in my mind at that time which was um, either kill yourself or sort of get used to it and work and live and be happy and so i wrote this song [applause] -yes- as you can see i chose another form of death which is rock and roll. But um, that being said, I wrote this song at this sort of critical juncture in my life and not only did these songs not only give me hope for the future but um, they certainly changed the band's lives. And um, one other sort of ironic point about this song is um, although the main lyric is "today is the greatest day," [applause] no, it's not the song you think it is. It's a different one. Um, it's pretty much like a joke song about how I want to kill myself but of course nobody ever gets that cos they get very fixated on the positive lines but if you actually listen, there's way more negativity. But of course, at this point in my life, it is a positive song because you know, it's about survival and um, certainly our survival as well. - Transcript from VH1 Storytellers, 2000.
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't live for tomorrow,
Tomorrow's much too long
I'll burn my eyes out
Before I get out
I wanted more
Than life could ever grant me
Bored by the chore
Of saving face
Today is the greatest
Day I've never known
Can't wait for tomorrow
I might not have that long
I'll tear my heart out
Before I get out
Pink ribbon scars
That never forget
I tried so hard
To cleanse these regrets
My angel wings
Were bruised and restrained
My belly stings
Today is
Today is
Today is
The greatest day
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you
Today is the greatest
Today is the greatest day
Today is the greatest day
That I have ever really known
Today single
Today video