"Once Upon A Time" (Smashing Pumpkins)

It's songs like "Once Upon A Time" that made me a fan of Smashing Pumpkins' Adore (1998).  It feels like four minutes of floating, weightless.  And it would be easy to drift away into its dreamlike atmospherics if it weren't grounded by the fact that it's about Billy Corgan's mom, Martha, dying from cancer and him trying to deal with the loss.  (Although, I think the song's solemnity makes it more beautiful than if it were just some pleasant-sounding sugary confection.)
Musically, it's a fine balance of organic and electronic elements—not unlike the rest of the album.  There are strummed acoustic and electric guitars, atmospheric synths and misty keyboards, as well as live drums (played with brushes by Beck's drummer, Joey Waronker) atop a delicate drum machine beat, which actually is easier to discern on the original 1997 demo.
I still find it odd that, back when Adore was released, Corgan had such a difficult time explaining to the music press what had inspired the sound of the record and how it differed from the multi-platinum Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness (1995).  Depending upon what you read at the time, some were reporting it was "an acoustic album," while others were describing it as "a techno album," and Corgan wasn't offering much information either way about what was true.
The production on Adore was greatly influenced by UK band Nitzer Ebb, a pioneering synth-driven industrial/post-punk band that was founded in the early 80s.  In fact, founding member of Nitzer Ebb, Vaughn “Bon” Harris, was recruited by Corgan to add finishing touches to nearly half of the completed tracks on the album, giving them an "electronic edge."
The result, to my ears, was something that felt like an homage to The Cure's moody and decadent album Disintegration (1989), only with late-90s drum sequencing and Pro Tools wizardry instead of pillowy mountains of late-80s gate reverb. 
At its heart, Adore was a collection of intensely personal, sometimes dark, well-written songs.  But it was never the techno-rock monolith that most people made it out to be.