Beautiful Garbage
Beautiful Garbage is the third studio album by American rock band Garbage. It was released on October 1, 2001, by Mushroom Records worldwide, with the North American release by Interscope Records the following day. Marking a departure from the sound the band had established on their first two releases, the album was written and recorded over the course of a year, when lead singer Shirley Manson chronicled their efforts weekly online, becoming one of the first high-profile musicians to keep an Internet blog. The album expanded on the band's musical variety, with stronger melodies, more direct lyrics, and sounds mixing rock with electronica, new wave, hip hop, and girl groups.
The album suffered from lack of promotion and the failure of its lead single "Androgyny" to achieve high chart positions. Beautiful Garbage debuted at number 13 on the Billboard 200, while topping the albums chart in Australia and peaking within the top 10 in multiple European countries, and was named one of Rolling Stones "Top 10 Albums of the Year".
A remastered and expanded edition of the album was released on November 5, 2021, to mark its 20th anniversary. The triple CD set featured two bonus CDs, consisting of b-sides, alternate versions, previously unreleased recordings and remixes.
Background
The origins of Beautiful Garbage came from a three-day recording session in September 1999 during Garbage's world tour in support of their second album, Version 2.0. The sessions resulted in "Silence Is Golden" and "Til the Day I Die", which were written for a proposed B-sides album. Both songs were loose and organic, contrasting with the very densely layered production featured on Version 2.0. "Silence Is Golden" in particular was written with an odd metric structure for a Garbage song: a 6/8 shuffle that progresses to a straight 4/4 beat.The sale of the band's North American independent record label Almo Sounds to Universal Music Group in early 2000 put the B-sides album on hold; Garbage decided to simply start work on recording their third album instead. Garbage began writing and recording the album at their own Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin in April of that year. "The only vision we had was that we wanted it to sound different," recalled guitarist Duke Erikson about the influence that the two new tracks had cast, adding that the band wished to evolve the chemistry that the band had developed from touring the previous two years.
Composition
More diverse than their first two studio albums, musically more melodic and lyrically more direct, Beautiful Garbage featured electronica fused with contemporary hip hop, with influences coming from 1980s new wave to 1960s girl groups. Garbage acknowledged the broad span of sounds and styles, which included Prince, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, and Phil Spector. Regarding the melancholic lyrics, Manson stated they happened because after two years touring "we were very isolated and removed from our lives", so when writing the lyrics, "I felt an overwhelming sense that I need to reinvest in my 'relations'".Drummer Butch Vig stated that the album is a "much simpler record than Version 2.0": "All of the songs sort of came from us playing live downstairs with guitar, bass and drums... That was the only conscious decision we made – to make the songs simpler. Some of the songs are still layered in spots; compared to the last record, there're about half as many tracks. As far as sounds go, it's basically drums, bass, some heavy guitars and Shirley singing." Erikson agreed that a more organic sound and simplistic approach with respect to production is embodied by the final mix of the album. "A lot of songs took shape in just a few hours as opposed to a few months with the last record....Some of the songs obviously took a long time, or we wouldn't have been in the studio for a full year. But a lot of them happened very quickly. 'Silence Is Golden' we recorded basically in three days and it was done. 'So Like a Rose,' for the most part, was recorded in three hours. I think we spent a lot of time just trying to resist adding stuff to . Because that was our tendency on the other two records." On the lyrical content of the songs, Vig remarked that " aren't specifically responses to the industry, but they could be read that way. Shirley has said that, for example, 'Shut Your Mouth' is about all the bullshit that's out there, but it's also a sort of note to self to keep your mouth shut, because she says she's the biggest, most opinionated loudmouth of anyone around. So they work on multiple levels."
Garbage decided the best way to start writing the album was to set up their recording equipment, guitars, keyboards, drum kit and a sampler and "jam" as a group. Their improvisation led the inspiration of a few songs such as "Shut Your Mouth", where the band played for three hours while Manson spontaneously composed melody and lyrics, while "Breaking Up the Girl" came from both Erikson and Vig strumming acoustic guitars in the studio lounge. The band felt that it was foremost that the new songs worked on an emotional level with Manson's vocals and lyrics. The initial sessions ultimately led to around 32 song ideas to develop further.
Recording
Smart Studios had upgraded their mixing console to a Trident A-Range model, which the band used extensively. The band tracked directly onto analogue tape using a Studer tape machine, which was then dumped into Pro Tools digital audio workstation. Overdubs and mixing were carried out in Pro Tools.Vig kept the drums and percussion simpler than before. Percussive tracks were recorded through a 30-year-old Roger Meyer compressor to color the sound. Some tracks however were fairly scrutinized: an instrumental break in "Til the Day I Die" incorporated reverse tape effects. Vig was not satisfied with his "swing" on a 6/8 groove written for a falsetto vocal Manson had recorded on "Can't Cry These Tears", so he recruited Matt Chamberlain to play the part. The recorded sequence incorporated Chamberlain's contribution, some of Vig's performance and some light programming. Chamberlain also performed a "chopped-up" drum pattern for "Cup of Coffee" and a "bitchin' funk groove" on "Confidence".
Much of the recorded guitar work was heavily processed, the band using a Line 6 Pod for melodic parts and embellishments: for example, for the middle eight of "So Like a Rose", Erikson played a Les Paul with an E-bow through the Pod, while the synth-like intro to "Parade" was created by layering an acoustic guitar part with a clean electric guitar. A tremolo effect on "Can't Cry These Tears" was inspired by 1960s production techniques. The amp modelers were used to pre-effect the recording prior to Pro Tools, in order to prevent phasing. For electric guitar recording, the band utilized cabinet miking – four microphones recorded the output of a Marshall amplifier. Acoustics were recorded using a single Blue Bottle microphone. Daniel Shulman, who had performed bass guitar on Version 2.0 and the band's two world tours, spent two separate weeks laying down bass parts. Shulman was given freedom by the band to come up with parts and be creative, creating new basslines on the verses of "Androgyny" and "Nobody Loves You". Shulman revisited "Silence Is Golden", breaking up the straight eighths of the coda to make it more interesting.
Due to Manson's growing confidence and technical skill, the band decided that her vocals did not require much treatment; "Shirley was singing so much better, and she was coming up with melodies that were longer and had more range to them...there wasn't any point in doing a lot with it. On something like 'Nobody Loves You' she sings really low on the verse, almost at the bottom of her range, and then and the end she's singing three and a half octaves higher, almost in falsetto, as the song turns into a big wall of sound", Vig remarked. Manson's original guide vocals were used in the final mixes of several songs; the vocal on "So Like a Rose" was recorded on the first take. On some songs, however, Manson's vocal was subject to Pro Tools plug-ins and post effects. "Til the Day Die" featured a digital "scratch"-effect, created by printing her vocal to DAT and using whatever edited passes sounded good. On "Can't Cry These Tears", the four vocal parts were triple-tracked using different mikes, while a guitar riff was matched to her voice for a section of "Breaking Up the Girl". On "Cherry Lips", her entire vocal was sped up and heavily EQ'd. On slower songs such as "Drive You Home", Garbage were not overly concerned with phrasing and pitch, giving it "a rawer quality". Manson improved on her guitar skills and played more guitar in the studio and live on stage for the eventual tour.
Garbage finished recording Beautiful Garbage at the end of April 2001, and spent a month completing the final mix. Final EQ, compressing and sequencing on the album was handled by Scott Hull of Classic Sound in New York. Despite running a competition on their website to name the album, Manson's own working title, inspired by a lyric in Hole's "Celebrity Skin", won out. Shirley explained: "We took the title from "Celebrity Skin" because when I heard Courtney singing "beautiful garbage", it's like a great dichotomy and we nicked it. Yes, she knows, and we have her blessing". The album artwork came from Garbage's wish for it to be "something organic"; The band came up with the fractured rose idea, thinking that it worked well with the album title. Garbage contracted London-based designers Me Company to create the visuals. The artwork for Beautiful Garbage cost $75,000.
Release
Preceding the worldwide release, on September 27, 2001, Beautiful Garbage was released early in Japan through Sony Music, featuring two exclusive bonus tracks: "Begging Bone", the B-side of "Androgyny", and "The World Is Not Enough", their James Bond theme from the film of the same name. In Australia and New Zealand, the album was released by their label FMR.On October 1, 2001, Beautiful Garbage was released worldwide, with the North American release the following day. Mushroom Records issued the album on five formats within the United Kingdom: a standard edition CD, a limited edition specially packaged CD, double LP, cassette and MiniDisc. Mushroom licensed the album to PIAS Recordings for release in Western Europe and through their distributor Playground Music in Scandinavia; PIAS pressed their own standard CD, "rose-pack" CD and double LP formats for the continent. In the United States, Almo Sounds and Interscope Records released Beautiful Garbage on CD, double LP and cassette. Interscope's parent company Universal Music Group released the album in Canada.