“The voice and mind behind 90s alt-rock anthems ‘Happy When it Rains’, ‘Stupid Girl’ and ‘Supervixen’ hates talking about individual songs, or the meaning of lyrics, or what makes this or that tune a good single,” The Guardian reports.
Despite becoming a “tough-talking, smart-mouthed, big-boot-wearing icon to a generation,” Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson, an Edinburgh native, has often had trouble with the business side of the music business. ‘When we first started out, we were signed to an indie label. We had a lot of freedom. Then we got sold like a commodity to a record label that did not give a flying fuck about our music or our career or us as people. And it was a nightmare. They had all these corporate expectations about us. We didn’t care if we weren’t the biggest band in the world! But to this record label, if you’re not the biggest band in the world, then you’re worthless. I just do not adhere to that principle.’ All the artists she loves, from Patti Smith to Siouxsie Sioux, ‘didn’t sell anything.'”
2001’s “Breaking Up the Girl” features plenty of the pristine, highly-produced wall-of-sound textures for which the band is famous. The video — which looks to have been shot in a computer chip manufacturer’s clean room with the aid of a robotic arm — is also standard fare for the band’s singularly stark visual aesthetic. At 2:33, the dense groove falls entirely away, clearing the stage for a whole-step modulation before rebuilding itself for a final iteration of the hook at 3:08.
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