Billy Corgan is still soaking up becoming a father of three in his late 50s.
“I’m 59, so there’s a bit of an age gap there,” the Smashing Pumpkins frontman exclusively told Us Weekly on the red carpet at the 2026 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York City on Thursday, June 11.
Corgan and his wife, Chloe Mendel Corgan, welcomed their first child, son Augustus, in November 2015 when the “1979” singer was 48. Their daughter Philomena arrived in October 2018 followed by another baby girl, Juno, in March 2025 when Corgan was 58.
“She’s a titanic force,” he told Us of his 14-month-old daughter. “We’re very excited. She’s just started talking.”
The musician joked that all three of his kids “have the Corgan insanity running through” them.
“Watching it emerge in real time is kind of like, ‘Oh, wow, OK. Now I understand why people have always had a problem with me!'” he added.
Corgan was infamously one of the most outspoken and mercurial rock stars of the 1990s, but he believes fatherhood has changed him for the better.
“I appreciate my life and music so much more since I’ve been a father because I have to really think hard,” he explained to Us. “‘OK, if I’m going to go away from my family, why am I going away?’ And I really celebrate my time in music now, where before when my life was only about music, it kind of drove me crazy because it was too obsessive. It’s like being too focused on something. It’s not helpful.”
Corgan attended Thursday’s Songwriters Hall of Fame event to perform a tribute to Kiss alongside Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik. In addition to Kiss members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, this year’s inductees included Taylor Swift, Kenny Loggins, Alanis Morissette and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart.
“I think [Swift] is a master with her lyrics and her melodies,” Rzeznik, 60, told Us on the red carpet. “Every single song she writes sounds like a hit — and the ones that aren’t hits sound like they could be. If they were in anybody else’s catalog, they would be hits.”
During her emotional acceptance speech, Swift — who at 36 became the youngest woman to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame — reflected on her journey in the industry.
“If I look back at my entire 23-year career in music,” she said, “the ups and downs, the industry battles, the trials and tribulations, the tears and the cheers and the dogpiling of doubt, the criticism, both fair and unfair, the complete loss of privacy, the world tours and the ego wars and the twists of fate, the absolute magical chaos of this path that I chose when I was too young to remember it ever being a choice at all, songwriting was the easiest thing I ever did.”
