Gay4Grunge: Garbage

Garbage is probably my favorite female fronted rock band of all time. No matter what phase I'm in with music Garbage is one of those acts that always remains in regular rotation for me. Garbage has so many different influences and genres that it's mixing and matching within their own music that they remain forever appealing to me. I'm the biggest fan of 90s Alternative that you'll ever meet and while Grunge is my favorite subgenre of Alternative Rock, I like most everything that fell into the category of Alternative Rock in the 90s. More so than any other band I can think of from the 90s, Garbage's sound seems to be a nexus point for all the various sub genres of Alternative Rock by the mid-90s. While Grunge is definitely an influence for Garbage, so is Shoegaze, Trip Hop. Electronica, Riot Grrrl, Britpop, Dance, New Wave, Dreampop and more. The band is also a mix of pop & rock, masculine & feminine, American & the UK as well as commercial appeal & the underground. As a result, Garbage has a pretty diverse set of music fans, something I'll go into more later, but it also means that the group sometimes slips through the cracks these days. 

Garbage touched upon so many different sounds and subgenres in Alternative Rock without fully defining any one of them so they don't get brought up in conversation these days when people talk about Grunge or Shoegaze or Britpop or Riot Grrrl. Alternative Rock radio may play Only Happy When It Rains still, but they don't seem to play much else despite the band having a fairly successful run of rock radio hits for over a decade. This to me shows the underlying misogyny that took hold of Alternative Rock radio at the turn of the millennium when Nu-Metal briefly took over. While Nu-Metal itself was short lived, the damage it wrought on Alternative Rock Radio would be felt for years and this included phasing out most female acts. As a result, Garbage struggled to maintain a presence in the 2000s on Alternative Rock Radio where you were more likely to hear Seether or Three Days Grace and the only female fronted acts allowed on rock radio back then were Evanesence (2003-2007) and Paramore (2008-the early 2010s). 

I also mentioned that you are likely to only hear Only Happy When it Rains on rock radio, but the bands who only had 1 or 2 hits in the 90s have been played more frequently over the past 2 decades on rock radio such as Sponge, Local H and The Toadies. Now I love those bands and I will be covering them on Gay4Grunge in the future, but it gives a slanted view of the 90s, because it sounds like Garbage is just a one hit wonder like those bands are, when they are very clearly not. Garbage's first 2 albums both went 4x Platinum and each album had 4 solid singles that were played on MTV and Alternative Rock radio between 1995-1999. They even had a huge #1 Alternative Rock hit with #1 Crush from the 1996 movie Romeo + Juliet. Yet, besides Only Happy When It Rains, those other songs have seemingly been forgotten and that's a damn shame, because not only were those singles great, but so were those albums too. Garbage's first 2 albums easily rank among my favorite albums of the 90s, especially for the latter half of the 90s. 

Much like The Smashing Pumpkins, my history with Garbage goes all the way back to when I first became a music fan in the late 90s. I remember the summer of 1997 was when I first started watching MTV every day. I remember early on seeing the music video to Stupid Girl coming on and my friend at the time informing me that this was Garbage and he was a big fan of theirs. After that Garbage was on my radar and I remember seeing the pink feather album cover a lot in stores and I remember seeing other friends having that CD in their collection as well. Still, I wouldn't start becoming a fan of Garbage until the following summer in 1998 when I started hearing the song Push It in ads for new music on MTV. So I became familiar with the song before I knew who it was or what it was called. I eventually saw the music video and that's when I learned it was Garbage and that the song was called Push It and it appeared to be the lead single to their upcoming album Version 2.0. I became quite enamored with the video, because it had this dark surrealism to it that was eye-catching while being slightly unsettling at the same time. I had become a huge horror movie fan by that point too so I appreciated the darkness of the Push It video, which also stood out from most of the poppier Alternative Rock acts at the time such as Fastball, Smash Mouth and Everclear. 

I was also drawn to Shirley Manson who had this dark confidence in her. She was feminine but strong and her voice didn't sound like most other female artists I had heard up to that point. Shirley could sing with a low huskiness that gave Garbage's music a lot of character because of how dark & sultry it sounded. You wanted to follow that voice to wherever it led even if it was going to take you to some pretty dark places along the way. I eventually taped the Push It video off MTV and would watch it constantly. I also remember at a middle school dance going up to the DJ and requesting Push It. Since it was early on in the dance and not everyone had arrived yet he did play it for me. I'll never forget that. 

Still my Garbage fandom really took hold when the second single from Version 2.0 dropped. I Think I'm Paranoid was a dynamite single that perfectly encapsulated Garbage's sound. It had these really heavy Grunge guitars in the pre chorus that would then give way to this extremely poppy chorus that could run laps through your head for days. I ended up taping that music video off MTV as well and watched it constantly. Now that there were two songs I loved off this album, I decided it was time to purchase Version 2.0 on CD at my local independent CD shop in Salinas California. I started off just listening to the 2 singles but as the other singles came out, specifically When I Grow Up and Special, those songs got rotation as well for me. Special was also poppy enough to be played on our local Adult Alternative radio station, CD93, so that was the first Garbage song I got to hear a lot on the radio as well. Around this time, I also purchased a bunch of the Grammy Nominations CD compilations from 1995-1999 and 1997's comp had Stupid Girl on it so I was able to listen to that song more frequently as well. 

By the fall of 1999 I considered myself a fan of Garbage. I would tune into MTV any time they were doing something with the network, which included an appearance on Fanatic where a super fan of Garbage got to interview them. I remember loving how candid and off the cuff Shirley was in this interview. The fan asked what Garbage hoped their legacy would be and Shirley responded that she doesn't care about such things, that's something men obsess over, but she would rather live in the moment and enjoy the ride while it lasts. After the fan left Shirley says she understands how he feels about their music, because it's how she felt about Siouxsie & The Banshees when she was in school. Shirley felt awkward and uncool in her youth, but Siouxsie made her feel cool and superior to her peers because she felt like she had this secret that only she understood. In a way Siouxsie's music became a defense shield for Shirley.  I ended up liking Shirley more after watching that interview. At a time when Teen Pop was fast on the rise and sexist Nu Metal was degrading Alternative Rock, Shirley felt like a real person who didn't have a filter like the teen pop stars did, but was also cool and chic in a way that none of the Nu Metal artists were. People like Shirley Manson were becoming increasingly rare in pop music at the turn of the millennium and that's when I started realizing slowly but surely that I was catching the tail end of an era (The Alternative Nation) that was way cooler than the era that was currently replacing it (The TRL and Nu-Metal Era). 

Before 1999 was over Garbage had one more surprise up their sleeve, which was the theme song to the latest James Bond flick The World is Not Enough. I remember watching Making the video for that one when it first aired on MTV. I also got the soundtrack for Christmas along with a compilation of all the previous James Bond theme songs. I used to listen to all those Bond Themes a lot and Garbage's was one of my favorites. You had to have a certain level of superstardom in order to be asked to do a Bond theme, which demonstrated just how big Garbage was by the end of the 90s. Unfortunately, the 2000s wouldn't be as kind to the group, but that's also when I became a mega fan of theirs. 

I remember the wait for Garbage's third album felt long at the time, but that's probably because I was still a teenager and time goes by much slower at that age. In the fall of 2001 Garbage released their 3rd studio album Beautiful Garbage and it represented a large pivot from their regular sound. On Garbage's first two albums they managed to balance lots of different genres at once, but on Beautiful Garbage they decided to lean into their pop side and dig a little deeper into the past as well. No on the surface this made a lot of sense. As I had said, Version 2.0 came out at the tail end of the Alternative Era and it made sense for Garbage to update their sound for the post teen pop era. No Doubt did the exact same thing at the exact same time as well with Rocksteady. Rocksteady helped No Doubt reach even more commercial success as they left Alternative Rock Radio behind for good to become top 40 pop stars, which in turn set the stage for Gwen Stefani's solo career where she went all pop. You could sense that this was part of Garbage's plan as well (minus the solo career.) As I stated earlier, Nu-Metal made Alternative Rock radio a lot less receptive to female acts, even if they had been staples of the format before Nu-Metal arrived, so Garbage trying to crossover to pop made good sense from a commercial standpoint. 

Unfortunately, Beautiful Garbage bombed! Rock radio wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but the album was still too left of center for top 40 radio to embrace like they had with No Doubt’s Rocksteady. I think there's many reasons for this. One of the reasons is that the band started releasing singles that addressed their queer audience with Cherry Lips and Androgyny, which alienated radio stations, who were all still homophobic when it came to song content back then. On top of that there was a bit of retro style to the album that was appealing, but on the first two albums Garbage sounded like the future whereas now they sounded a little behind the times in a way. I also don't remember seeing any of the music videos from this album on MTV either. There are probably other reasons too, but I'm not going to dwell on it. In the end Beautiful Garbage derailed the band's momentum in a big way and they never quite fully recovered commercially despite some solid albums and singles to come. 

By 2002 it appeared the mainstream had become indifferent to Garbage, which is also around the time I became indifferent towards the mainstream. Thanks to Stone Temple Pilots, I was now more interested in music from the past than the present, especially Grunge and 90s Alternative. Plus, now that I had a part time job I had disposable income so I was able to buy more CDs and one of the CDs I bought over the summer of 2002 during my initial flush with 90s Alternative was Garbage's 1995 self-titled debut. I knew the big hits already with Stupid Girl & Only Happy When it Rains, but I didn't know the rest of the album that well, but I fell in love with it instantly. Deep cuts such as Not My Idea, My Lover's Box and especially the album opener Supervixen became fast favorites and I was spinning that album non-stop as a result. This was the moment I went from being a Garbage fan to a Garbage Stan as the kids would say. The album felt like a crash course in all things 90s Alternative and it didn't have a bad song on it. 

Now that we are back on the debut, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the band members of Garbage and how they came together. Something that gets overlooked a lot when talking about Garbage is that all four members were music industry vets by the time they released Garbage's debut album in 1995. Shirley Manson had already been in two bands beforehand, the first being Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie and the second being Angelfish. Meanwhile the other three members of the group (Butch Vig, Duke Erikson & Steve Marker) had also been in bands beforehand such as Spooner & Fire Town, the latter of which found some minor chart success on the Alternative Rock Chart during the early days of that chart in the late 80s. Vig and Marker meanwhile set up their own recording and production studio in Madison Wisconsin, which was called Smart Studios. 

It was with the creation of Smart Studios that Butch Vig started getting recognition as a producer, which lead to Butch producing more than a few classic albums in the early 90s. In my opinion Butch Vig is one of the biggest and most important figures in Grunge and 90s Alternative as a whole. Butch is truly one of the main sonic architects of the genre and he is responsible for a lot of Grunge's initial crossover appeal. First and foremost, there is his production work on Nirvana's Nevermind, which did a much better job honing in on Kurt's skills as a songwriter and a melodicist than Bleach had done. Butch was able to capture lightning in a bottle with Nevermind and if he hadn't produced it I doubt it would have become as huge as it did. Once Nevermind topped the Billboard charts and ushered in the era of Grunge and Alternative Rock, Butch became even more in demand and he produced some of the best records of that era. Butch Vig produced the first 2 Smashing Pumpkins albums with the second album Siamese Dream becoming another huge crossover success that also influenced many bands to come. Butch also produced albums for other Grunge acts such as Tad (8 Way Santa), L7 (Bricks Are Heavy) and Sonic Youth (Dirty) and the albums he produced for those bands are easily my favorites for each of them. 

Butch, Erik and Steve eventually decided they wanted to take all that they had learned as musicians, producers, remixers and engineers and apply it to a band. As they started crafting the music, they realized they wanted a female vocalist for these songs. One night while they were watching MTV's 120 Minutes, they saw the music video for Angelfish's Suffocate Me, which apparently was the only time MTV ever played that video. Luckily, they caught it because they were impressed with Shirley Manson and wanted to reach out to her. Shirley had never heard of Butch Vig, but she had heard many of the albums he produced once it was pointed out to her, which made her more excited to join the band. At first some of the sessions didn't go as well as hoped, but eventually all four of them began to gel together and what they created was one the best albums of the 90s. Butch says he enjoys being in Garbage because he gets to do a lot of things from drumming to producing and more, which always keeps him engaged. Due to his commitments to Garbage, Butch produced less albums than before, but over the years he has produced some albums including two by The Foo Fighters with his production work on The Foo Fighters' Wasting Light earning him a Grammy award. More recently he produced the last Silversun Pickups album Widow's Weeds. 

Now let's jump forward again to 2005 with the release of Garbage's 4th studio album Bleed Like Me. By this point I had just finished my freshman year of college and I had come out of the closet. I was already writing reviews for the school paper, but I had not started DJing yet. That summer I kept busy doing Spanish summer classes and working full time at the Marriott. I was in the car a lot so I was listening to music a lot. That summer also saw a huge slew of new albums coming out that I wanted to get, including albums by Nine Inch Nails, Porcupine Tree, Coldplay, Weezer, The Foo Fighters, Beck and of course Bleed Like Me. Sonically Bleed Like Me does a 180 from Beautiful Garbage where it jetsons all the pop and goes full on rock. Bleed Like Me is easily Garbage's most raw and rocking album in their catalogue and it felt like the group was trying to course correct the last album by making sure rock radio would play the singles off Bleed Like Me.. It did work, at least on my local Alternative Rock Station at the time, 955WBRU in Rhode Island. WBRU played the album's first 2 singles quite a bit and it was nice to hear new Garbage on the radio again. 

Now flash forward to the summer of 2007 and I'm living in New York City for a radio internship with The Ryan and Caroline Show and this is when Garbage is set to release their Greatest Hits album. That Greatest Hits album contained a new song entitled Tell Me Where It Hurts, which seemed to be a throwback to the retro sounding pop of Beautiful Garbage. It also had a new music video that seemed inspired by 60s fashion and film as well. I liked the song a lot and when the Greatest Hits dropped, I remember walking over to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square to buy it. Later in the fall I ended up buying the accompanying DVD with all the music videos and a documentary about the band too. At the time it appeared Garbage was breaking up and this was their final bow. 

For the next few years things remained quiet on the Garbage front, but then in the early 2010s the group reformed. It was soon revealed that they had begun work on their 5th studio album, which ended up being called Not Your Kind of People. By 2012 I was now living in DC with my family while doing a long-distance relationship with my future husband Cory. I remember that the album had 2 lead singles, because one was to be released in Europe, which was The Battle in Me, and one to be released in America, which was called Blood for Poppies. I really liked both of these songs, especially Blood for Poppies, which quickly became one of my favorite singles Garbage had ever put out. Blood for Poppies received decent airplay on my local rock station in Washington DC which was called DC 101 and my excitement levels were definitely raised for this new album. Once I heard Not Your Kind of People I loved it immediately. Whereas their last 2 albums either leaned heavily into pop or rock, Not Your Kind of People combined the two in a way we hadn't heard from Garbage since their first two albums from the 90s. Maybe that's why I like that album so much and would rank it as my third favorite Garbage album after their first two. 

Four years later Garbage returned with their 6th studio album Strange Little Birds and the lead single was another classic Garbage song entitled Empty. I remember watching the music video the day it dropped and getting excited for another Garbage album. By 2016 I was now married to my husband, living in the apartment we still live in now and working the job I still work at. I also had just gotten a smartphone for Christmas of 2015 if you can believe it. I also had Spotify now, but not premium yet so I was still buying some CDs and Strange Little Birds is probably one of the last 5 CDs I ever bought before upgrading to Spotify Premium the following year. My husband and I were visiting friends in Pittsburg and one of those friends, Brandon, is someone I went to college with and I got him into a lot of music during that time including Garbage. Brandon took us to this five-story shop that sold comics, movies, books and albums and that's where I bought Strange Little Birds on CD. 

Now ever since Garbage got back together in the early 2010s, they have been touring and performing relentlessly. When they were not touring behind a new album, they were touring behind the 20th Anniversary of their first two albums. I managed to see them live twice in 2012 & 2016 when they were promoting Not Your Kind of People and Strange Little Birds. First off both shows were great with the band sounding phenomenal on stage. Remember this is a band made up of music producers and sound engineers so they know how to make things sound good in general. Shirley is also a firecracker on stage and at one point we made direct and sustained eye contact! One of the things that stood out for me at both shows was the interesting mix of people in the crowd. Due to Garbage being at the intersection of different genres and sounds the people who attend Garbage shows are more eclectic compared to most rock shows I've ever attended. You do have the rock guys who wear Nirvana and Led Zeppelin shirts, but you also have a lot of women at these shows too. On top of that you also see more gay man at these shows, both young and old. The older gays usually have New Order and Depeche Mode shirts on and the younger gays I've seen have more colorful tank tops and are cheering for Shirley in the front row. You never see all these types of people mixing that much anywhere else, but Garbage shows are special because of it.

At both shows Shirley Manson made a point to talk about the band's queer fans, dedicating a song to them each time and telling them that they have their full support (for my shows they dedicated Cherry Lips and Sex is Not the Enemy to the queer fans). Shirley says the band's queer fans are very important to her and she also makes sure to acknowledge them and give them a safe space to express themselves. My friends who have also seen Garbage live, which include Brandon and Liz, also confirmed that Shirley talked about the band's queer fans at their shows too and dedicated a song to them as well. A few years later I read a very touching open letter Shirley wrote for Billboard Pride for the queer community where she acknowledged the pain and violence this community has had to endure while also saying that their ability to still shine and live their best lives as best they can is a testament to the strength and beauty of this community. I remember tweeting about it and Shirley responded immediately saying she was crying when she wrote that! As if I couldn't love her even more! Stone Temple Pilots may be my favorite band to come out of Grunge and 90s Alternative, but Shirley Manson is my favorite person to come out of that era. To me she is a pillar of strength and resilience who speaks her mind and isn't afraid to rattle some cages. 

I've been able to have more Shirley Manson in my life these past few years thanks to her Podcast The Jump with Shirley Manson, which has 3 seasons now. In this podcast Shirley speaks with different musicians about the one song of theirs that changed everything for them. What's nice about this podcast is that the episodes are bit-sized coming in at 20 minutes or less. Shirley speaks with such a huge range of musicians from every different background, race, gender and sexual orientation as well as every genre as well. I will say that my favorite episodes are the ones where she talks with other female alternative rock musicians from the 90s and early 00s such as Liz Phair, Alanis Morrisette, Courtney Love and Karen O. I like these episodes not just because these are musicians I'm very familiar with, but also because each of them touch upon the sexism and misogyny within the music industry and especially within the rock scene itself. The Liz Phair episode in particular discusses how women's opinions on rock music in general are always written off and never considered important compared to male rock fans' opinions. Honestly, I believe that 100% and I think this underlying sexism within rock is part of the reason rock is becoming less and less relevant because it's speaking to an ever-decreasing audience and it isn't doing much to reach outside of just straight white cis men. Of course, Grunge and the promise of the Alternative Nation in the 90s was supposed to change all that and for a few short years it did. Yet, by the time the 90s ended rock closed itself off again to women and people who are not white straight cis men and I think this is one of the reasons why rock has been on a slow but steady decline ever since. 

Garbage meanwhile kept touring and recording, dropping their latest album No Gods No Master in 2021. Their fanbase may be much smaller than it once was in the 90s, but the fans they do have are very dedicated and loyal to the group. At the very least there are enough Garbage fans for the band to continue touring and recording and for most bands at this stage that's enough. I don't foresee Garbage stopping anytime soon and it's nice to still see a band from the 90s who are not only still together and still active, but still have their entire original lineup together. Garbage has managed to avoid losing any members tragically before their time and that's not something you can say about most of their peers. For that alone Garbage must be doing something right. Join me next week when I will discuss their music in much more depth as I countdown my top 20 Garbage songs.