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Garbage (band)

Garbage is a Scottish-American[1] rock band formed in 1993 in Madison, Wisconsin.[2] The band's line-up consisting of Scottish singer Shirley Manson (vocals) and American musicians Duke Erikson (guitar, bass, keyboards), Steve Marker (guitar, keyboards), and Butch Vig (drums, production) has remained unchanged since its inception. All four members are involved in the songwriting and production process. Garbage has sold over 17 million albums worldwide.[3]

The band's eponymous debut album was critically acclaimed upon its release, selling over four million copies and achieving double platinum certification in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. It was accompanied by a string of increasingly successful singles from 1995 to 1996, including "Stupid Girl" and "Only Happy When It Rains".[4][5] Follow-up Version 2.0, released in 1998 after a year in production, was equally successful, topping the UK Albums Chart and receiving two Grammy Award nominations. Garbage followed this by performing and co-producing the theme song to the 19th James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999).[6]


Garbage's third album Beautiful Garbage was also critically acclaimed,[7] but failed to match the commercial success of its predecessors.[8] Garbage quietly disbanded amidst the troubled production of their fourth album Bleed Like Me, but regrouped to complete the album, which was released in 2005 and peaked at a career-high number four in the U.S.[9] The band cut short their Bleed Like Me concert tour and announced an indefinite hiatus,[10] emphasizing that they had not broken up but rather wished to pursue separate interests.[11] The hiatus was briefly interrupted in 2007, when the band recorded new tracks for their greatest hits album Absolute Garbage.[12] The band reunited in 2011,[13] and self-released their 2012 album Not Your Kind of People on their own label Stunvolume to positive reviews. Their next album, Strange Little Birds, followed in 2016. Their seventh studio album, No Gods No Masters, was released in 2021.[14]

Musical style[edit]

Garbage's musical style has been described as alternative rock,[147][148][149] electronic rock,[150][151] electropop,[152][153] trip hop,[147] post-grunge,[154] industrial rock,[155] dance-rock,[156] and hard rock.[157] Garbage's intention is to make pop-like songs which mix a variety of genres, with Steve Marker saying that the band wanted to "take pop music and make it as horrible sounding as we can."[18] These genres include trip hop, grunge, 1980s rock music, techno, power pop, and shoegaze.[158][159][160] Shirley Manson has stated that the band itself "used to describe [their sound] as sci-fi pop, because we felt it was taking a futuristic approach."[161] Vig has said the crossover-heavy sound was inspired by the band's background with remixes, where songs would be rearranged to every musical style to which they held interest,[162] and also that he "grew up listening to everything from pop radio and opera to country music and polka, so I really thought that Garbage would be an interesting and eclectic thing to do."[18] Lindsay Zoladz of Pitchfork notes Garbage prevailed in the glory days of alternative-rock "probably because their sound was a hectic amalgamation of almost everything that mingled on the format's airwaves: electronica, punk, industrial rock, grunge, and the occasional trip-hop".[163] Likewise, Vice wrote that from their singular concoctions of styles like trip hop, grunge, rock, techno, and shoegaze, Garbage "has forged a kind of queasy originality" in the search of "a kind of perverse beauty".[164]


Garbage has been inspired by The Velvet Underground, Iggy & The Stooges, T. Rex, Roxy Music,[165] The Pretenders,[166] Siouxsie and the Banshees,[166][167] Blondie, Cocteau Twins,[168][169][170] Patti Smith,[166] The Smashing Pumpkins and David Bowie.[166]

 – vocals, guitar, keyboards

Shirley Manson

 – guitar, bass, keyboards

Duke Erikson

 – guitar, bass, keyboards

Steve Marker

 – drums, percussion, keyboards

Butch Vig

(1995–1996)

Garbage tour

(1998–1999)

Version 2.0 tour

(2001–2002)

Beautiful Garbage tour

(2005)

Bleed Like Me tour

(2012–2013)

Not Your Kind of People tour

(2015)

20 Years Queer tour

(2016)

Strange Little Birds tour

(with Blondie) (2017)[171][172]

Rage and Rapture tour

(2018)[173][174]

20 Years Paranoid

Summer Tour (2019)

[175]

(2023)

Garbage & Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds: Live in Concert

(2024)[176]

Garbage 2024

Headlining tours


Supporting tours

(1995)

Garbage

(1998)

Version 2.0

(2001)

Beautiful Garbage

(2005)

Bleed Like Me

(2012)

Not Your Kind of People

(2016)

Strange Little Birds

(2021)

No Gods No Masters

Studio albums

Buckley, Peter (2003). . Rough Guides. ISBN 1843531054.

The Rough guide to rock : the definitive guide to more than 1200 artists and bands

Simpson, Paul (2003). . Rough Guides. ISBN 1843532298.

The Rough Guide to Cult Pop: The Songs - The Artists - The Genres - The Dubious Fashions

Edit this at Wikidata

Official website

at IMDb

Garbage

discography at Discogs

Garbage