It takes a pretty special something to have been conceived in the 90s and still be alive in its most original form today. I’m a 90s kid in the truest sense of the word. I was brought into a world of fake love and financial security only to watch that completely deteriorate with each passing year. But I guess…. actual human people don’t have the luxury of taking a 5 year hiatus on life. I firmly believe that is the only thing that’s kept 1995’s greatest alternative hit band Garbage alive.
2012 brought the first album for the band since the hiatus and now 4 years later they’re at it for another go around. And as is the nature of band like this, it’s gonna be a bear all. Front(wo)man, Shirley Manson cuts deep as f**k with her sharp lyrics about her sexual trauma as a child. For perspective, Billboard reports:
A few years ago, Manson revealed she had a relationship with a teacher in school; but even before that, she was traumatized by her first sexual experience, as a young teen. “A boy fingered me, then grabbed a knife and told me he was going to stick it up my vagina. I was 13 years old,” she recalls — the first time she has ever publicly spoken about the incident. “It frightened the s**t out of me.” A couple of days later, she realized that she had left her bra at his house. The boy threatened to mail it to her parents.
What’s fucking bullshit about reading tales about other people’s sexual trauma is that I can almost always say something kinda like that happened to me. And then I can text a girlfriend and they’ll also be like that’s fucked up, but same. So in a way, as heartbreaking as Manson’s experience and as sharp as her words may be, this is an album for all of us.
I had a flame of embarrassment, but I landed on my feet like a ninja, so I didn’t give a f**k. I want people to see my fall. I don’t want to make a lie that I am this perfect person. I am a hot mess! It’s OK to fall.
And she’s never been one to pretend not to be a mess. And like me when I sit down with someone who seems a little nicer than the layman but also a little too ugly for me to be interested… I divulge my every thought and then quickly find my candor humiliating. Manson backtracks:
I don’t know why I am telling you all this.
But she’s using her platform to say the things most of us are too afraid to. Her thoughts become tangible on a record. Her existence becomes solidified. And we’re lucky to have her. For all that she is. For all that she’s been through.