Know who I love? Duh. Shirley Manson. You know, from Garbage? And honestly, I was quite surprised while checking the Evil Beet archives that we have never formally written about the awesomeness that is Shirley Manson. Ever. This is the first real Shirley Manson post, categorized under, of course, ‘Shirley Manson‘. And if I may speak freely, it’s high time that we recognized just how awesome this lady actually is. Do you guys remember 1995-1996 when Garbage released their self-titled album, ‘Garbage’? Because it was awesome. I was only twelve and thirteen, respectively, when their first album came out, but they were a definitive sector of music for my adolescence. This, for days:
And then the obligatory, ‘Only Happy When It Rains’, which was a staple song in the band that I used to play in, and, no word of lie, I’d f-ck up the intro every time:
Amazing, right? What a trip down memory lane if you haven’t seen this stuff in a decade, and what an eye-opener if you’ve never been exposed to Garbage. Consider the fact that I just may have popped your Garbage cherry.
From Nylon:
On embracing who she is:
“I used to torture myself because I thought I wasn’t pretty enough, that I wasn’t young enough, I wasn’t this or that enough. Now I’m like, F**k it.”On the youth:
“I love youth culture. But I also want some wisdom and I want some experience and I want some knowledge. I think we put far too much responsibility on young people’s shoulders.”On deciding to take a break in 2005:
“When we first came off the road, I felt that we had worn out our welcome as a band. We had enjoyed such a zeitgeist moment with our first two records – people were excited by us – and then the music scene shifted so completely. Garage bands like The Strokes and White Stripes came in and put us out of business, for lack of a better term. And I knew it: Oof, we are f**ked. And I don’t think we were quick enough to adapt. I just didn’t know how to fix it. Nobody in the band did. We’d been on the road for so long in our little microcosm, and we had no idea what was happening in the rest of the world, and I think that affects your ability to be an effective artist.”On reuniting with her band in the summer of 2010:
“We were all nervous, but the second we saw each other’s faces, we literally just started laughing because it seemed so ridiculous that we hadn’t seen each other in so long, and it felt really familiar.”
Awesome, yes? Check out the behind-the-scenes video for new project, ‘Felt’.
