Garbage’s Shirley Manson: ‘Children should not be used to make money for big corporations’
Shirley Manson thinks a great reckoning is due in the music business, which she describes as “an absolute nest of abuse of power and sexual violence”.
The Scottish frontwoman for American electronic rock outfit Garbage says she is still routinely patronised by “male musicians, male managers, male accountants. I’ve talked about this my whole career.” She is hugely supportive of the #MeToo movement. “The younger generation of women are not f____ around. And I hope they all find the courage to come out and talk about the harm they’ve been caused. Look, this is an industry that’s entirely unregulated, that legitimises the selling of teenagers. The insatiable appetite for young flesh is sickening, when they are signing 13-year-old girls and literally grooming them until they’re 16 and then putting their records out. Children should not be used to make money for big corporations.”
It is good to have Manson back, as bold, brash and unrepentantly opinionated as ever. She first burst into the consciousness of pop fans in the mid-Nineties, a pale faced firebrand with a string of confrontational hits including Only Happy When It Rains, Queer and Stupid Girl. Garbage sold over 17 million albums and provided the theme tune to the 1999 Bond film The World Is Not Enough. In her own right, Manson had a recurring role as a killer robot in the TV series of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and has performed on stage with such iconoclastic stars as Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, The Pretenders, Gwen Stefani and Kings of Leon.
“I’ve always been an outsider,” says Manson. “I am a female in an all-male band, I’m the youngest amongst considerably older musicians, I’m a Scottish person living in America. I don’t actually belong anywhere, I’m just this little red-haired rocket revolving around the sun on my own.” She explodes with laughter, an incredibly infectious outburst of apparently irrepressible glee. “I used to feel horrible about that but now I feel grateful, because I’ve been able to maintain my integrity. If I’m going to be the only one standing up in the middle of the room pointing out the turd in the corner, then so be it. I’m quite happy to fulfil that role.”
Following a five year break, Garbage have just released their seventh album, No Gods No Masters, and it certainly sounds like Manson has a lot to get off her chest. It offers a brash yet seductive concoction of industrial goth rock sounds and sweet pop melodies, with Manson venting about such big issues as global politics (The Men Who Rule the World), social injustice (Waiting for God) and transgender rights (Godhead) whilst creating potent fantasies of a feminist avenging angel (A Woman Destroyed, Flipping the Bird, Wolves).
Now 54, Manson jokes that she is considered ancient in pop star years. “I’ve endured a lot of unpleasant comments about my age, my looks, my physical attributes. I think if I was a dude that would be very different. But I feel better in my life now than I’ve ever done, because my own vanity and obsession with my appearance diminishes with every day that passes. I don’t need to play that game any more, I’m not in that swim. So it doesn’t really matter if I’ve put on a few pounds during Covid; it doesn’t really matter if my hair’s messy and I don’t look like a Barbie doll. At some point you just have to release yourself from that.”
Manson was already a veteran of the Scottish rock scene as keyboard player and backing vocalist with Goodbye Mr Mackenzie when she was talent spotted in 1994 by a trio of American rock producers, Butch Vig (drummer, now 65), Duke Erikson (guitars and keyboards, now 70) and Steve Marker (guitarist, 62). As singer and lyricist with Garbage, her unconventional looks and defiant attitude helped cultivate a reputation as one of pop’s spikiest and most outspoken female artists.
“I was an anomaly in my generation. I was described as loud-mouthed, opinionated, ‘she won’t shut up!’ And now I see all the women at it. Even the ones who are making quite pleasing pop music – they are also speaking up and pushing the agenda forward of a more egalitarian society. That’s exciting to me.” She cites the example of sexually assertive hip hop anthem WAP (Wet Ass P____)’ by Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion reaching number one all over the world and being performed at the 2021 Grammy awards. “I thought it was marvellous, bordering on revolutionary.”
The new Garbage album had almost been completed when the Covid pandemic shut down their studio in March 2020. “Being stuck in Los Angeles was intense and somewhat freaky. I felt cut off from my family and my homeland. I haven’t seen my sister and her children in a year and a half, which has been hard.” The Hollywood neighbourhood where she lives with her husband of 10 years, sound engineer Billy Bush, was at the centre of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the summer of 2020. “Los Angeles is a very violent city, and it started to feel like a war zone. There were 25 police helicopters above our house, day in and day out, for what felt like 24 hours a day. And then we had an earthquake. At which point I sat up in bed and screamed: ‘I f____ wanna go home!’” She bursts into laughter again. “That was me reaching the end of my tether.”
It took Manson some months to regain focus and put finishing touches to the album. “I couldn’t get my head on straight at all,” as she puts it. For a powerful frontwoman who presents herself with such intense passion and humour, her lyrics often reveal deep veins of insecurity. She has spoken in the past of self-harming when she was younger, and on vulnerable new ballad ‘Uncomfortably Me’, Manson laments a youth spent feeling like “a waste of time, a waste of space”.
“I don’t necessarily see insecurity as a negative,” she says. “When I was a kid, it was a destructive force that, as I grew older, I was able to harness and use to my advantage. I wish I could have enjoyed our success a little more, I wish I hadn’t been so self punishing. But you grow up, you mature, and you still have today, so you change your mind and go forward.”
She recognises thorny aspects to her character. “I have a very powerful personality, and I’m not particularly proud of it. I’ve created a lot of pain for people. But because I am a sort of hyper-sensitive person, I feel pain really intensely. When you’re young and in self-survival mode, much like a baby rattlesnake, you have no idea how strong your venom is. But it has the power to kill.” On the song Wolves, she addresses something she describes as “a struggle all human beings entertain, internally: am I going to be decent here, or am I going to be a c___?” Her mischievous laughter implies she hasn’t quite decided the answer.
She does think there is a more critical focus on her behaviour as a female artist. “If I had a d___, I would be treated differently. Whoever I’m dealing with, I feel relegated to second position because I’ve got a vagina!” She laughs with gusto. “It’s ludicrous! As I’m getting older, I’m getting less angry and more amused by how silly it all is.”
Manson declares herself delighted to stand at the other end of that spectrum of sexism now. “Do I want to spend my energy chasing youth, when my own youth wasn’t particularly happy? Or do I pursue growing older and be curious about it as an artist? I’ve got no interest in having plastic surgery. I don’t even dig the way it looks. So I’ll have to live with the repercussions of my decisions and I’m sure I’ll be punished for it.”
She does not sound worried. “I have many faults, but I’m not particularly a people pleaser. I’m not here to present well. I’m here to live my life in the greediest way I can and have the most experiences I can. I don’t want to keep reliving, rewinding and remaking old Garbage records everyone’s obsessed with, and looking the same as I did when I was in my twenties and thirties. I want new adventure. Bring it on!”
Garbage: No Gods No Masters is out on BMG now