Happy 25th Anniversary to Garbage’s eponymous debut album Garbage, originally released August 15, 1995.
Serendipity spawns the most magical and symbiotic connections sometimes. And once that chemistry comes to fruition and subsequently proliferates, it’s no surprise that we tend to tap into our selective memories and proclaim that the relationship—romantic, platonic, professional or otherwise—was destined to be all along, because, I mean, what else could explain such perfect symmetry. It was just, ya know, meant to be.
This phenomenon in life is also often mirrored in artistic collaboration and the genesis of Garbage is evidence thereof. Holed up in his Madison, Wisconsin headquartered Smart Studios, a few years removed from his notable production triumphs with Nirvana’s generation-defining Nevermind (1991), Sonic Youth’s Dirty (1992), and the Smashing Pumpkins’ debut Gish (1991) and smash follow-up Siamese Dream (1993), Butch Vig embarked upon a new chapter of his career by forming Garbage with longtime cohorts and fellow sonic experimentalists Duke Erikson and Steve Marker.
Soon thereafter, the trio recognized that the missing piece to giving the group a formal go was the absence of a commanding lead presence—preferably a woman—with the confidence, charisma and vocal chops to distinguish the band from the rest of the alt-rock landscape.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in the great city of Edinburgh, a Scottish songstress named Shirley Manson was also in the midst of a fresh career phase with her new band Angelfish, which morphed out of her previous outfit Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie. In early 1994, the buzz behind the group was beginning to build and the video for “Suffocate Me”—the lead single from their self-titled debut LP—was added to the rotation of MTV’s 120 Minutes. (Side note of unabashed nostalgia: Man, I miss that program. But I digress.)
Marker just happened to be viewing the program one evening when the video played, and his interest was piqued. Marker, Erikson and Vig spared precious little time in setting up an introduction with Manson and despite an infamously botched initial audition—at least according to Manson herself—the gentlemen had found their coveted lead.
When Garbage’s inaugural single “Vow” debuted at the modest #39 slot on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart in June 1995, roughly a year after the threesome fortuitously became a quartet, it did so within the predominantly male-dominated airplay paradigm of the mid-1990s. A cursory glance at the artists who secured the Modern Rock chart’s top spot in 1995 reveals just one woman among their ranks: Alanis Morissette, who peaked at #1 twice that year with “You Oughtta Know” and “Hand In My Pocket” from her breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill. Otherwise, alt-boy bands including Bush, Green Day, Live and Silverchair reigned supreme.
Although Garbage wouldn’t capture the #1 spot until the first week of 1997 with “#1 Crush” (remixed for the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, but originally released in 1995 as the B-side to “Vow”), from its inception, the Manson-fronted band was doing its part to provide a welcome, er, alternative to at least some of the testosterone overload that defined the alternative rock scene at the decade’s midway point.
But beyond their charismatic firebrand of a frontwoman, the quartet differentiated themselves in another key way: their sound. With arguably Nine Inch Nails as the other analogue at the time with respect to their genre-bending disposition and proclivity toward dense and dark textures, Garbage melded an abundance of riffs, synths, samples, and looped percussion for a brooding yet melodic mélange.
“I think because of my success with Nirvana and the Pumpkins, everyone expected a grunge album,” Vig confided during a 2005 Vanyaland interview. “And Garbage sounded different, just in the way we approached using different genres and blending them together—electronica, hip-hop beats, film atmospherics, pop melodies and fuzz guitars and whatever—and then a lot of other bands started to copy that approach. I’ve definitely heard bands Garbage influenced, and that’s totally cool with me. We take that as a compliment.”
Preceding the release of the band’s eponymous debut album by nearly five months when it emerged in March 1995, the aforementioned “Vow” served as the band’s official introduction and captured the group’s sonic muscle replete with multiple textures and shapeshifts that envisaged more of the same to come via the full-length. Poised and coolly defiant, a vengeful Manson declares war on her lover-turned-adversary, vowing, “I came to shut you up / I came to drag you down / I came around to tear your little world apart / And break your soul apart.” No empty threat, Manson makes sure that there’s no doubt in listeners’ minds that she means business.
Four additional singles subsequently saw the light of day, including the trip-hop-esque “Queer,” a universal anthem for embracing eccentricity in its various forms, which continued Garbage’s steady momentum at radio, building upon the solid airplay figures for “Vow.” It’s also notable for featuring the percussion prowess of the late Clyde Stubblefield, a fellow Madison, WI resident at the time and the “funky drummer” extraordinaire who played a vital role in James Brown’s musical legacy and, by extension, countless hip-hop samples.
The propulsive “Only Happy When It Rains” unfurls as a sardonic, self-deprecating nod to the angst-ridden, misery-loves-company credo—or at least the semblance thereof—that largely defined alternative rock during the 90s’ first half. The song took off at radio in the early weeks of 2016 and the accompanying video quickly became a fixture on MTV (remember when the network actually played videos?), cementing the single as the group’s breakthrough moment.
Nearly one year after Garbage’s arrival, “Stupid Girl”—a damn near perfect pop-rock confection—became the crowning success of their debut album, peaking at #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, garnering a pair of GRAMMY Award nominations, and a coveted MTV Video Music Award nod.
“I have always defined myself as a feminist,” Manson reflected in revisiting “Stupid Girl” during a 2015 Rolling Stone interview. “I have never rejected that label. I’ve always welcomed it and believed in it. But I also think you have to be careful that you don’t get entrenched in clichés. I don’t think that just because you’re a feminist, that gives women carte blanche to do whatever they want and behave which way they wish. I felt strongly that when someone acts like an asshole that you should challenge that. So I loved the idea of a woman calling out another woman. I felt like it was a fresh perspective.”
Released internationally as the fifth and final single, the album-concluding “Milk” combines an airy, atmospheric chill with Manson’s lyrics of longing and her yearning, repeated refrain “I’m waiting, I’m waiting for you.” As with “Queer,” the track reinforces Garbage’s comfort and versatility in exploring various moods and tempos, from the abrasive to the subdued and everything in between.
Among the non-singles, standout moments abound. “Supervixen” opens the affair with a blast of high-octane, guitar-driven dissonance. “As Heaven Is Wide” is an enveloping industrial-electro jaunt. The insistent “Not My Idea” alludes to previous disenchantment punctuated by Manson’s deadpan proclamation in the song’s chorus, “This is not my idea of a good time,” lyrics that I often find myself revisiting when I’m stuck in boring business meetings. My personal favorite is the pounding “My Lover’s Box,” which recalls Real Life’s 1983 hit single “Send Me An Angel” in Manson’s chorus (“Send me an angel to love / I need to feel a little piece of heaven”).
Since Garbage arrived a quarter-century ago, the group has cultivated a career worthy of reverence and wholly devoid of the superficial trappings of pop-rock stardom, owing to their unbridled discipline and dynamism, both in the studio and on stage. Three years later in the spring of 1998, they unleashed an even broader critical and commercial triumph with their sophomore, GRAMMY Album of the Year shortlisted set Version 2.0 and they’ve delivered four sterling albums in the two decades since. With rumors swirling that their seventh studio project—the successor to 2016’s Strange Little Birds—is on the near horizon, there’s no better time to relive where it all began by dropping the needle anew on their enduringly wonderful debut.
LISTEN: