Garbage is a Scottish-American Alternative rock band, formed April 8th 1994. Once producer Butch Vig decided to break out of the rock he had been producing ever since Nirvana’s Nevermind, he got together with his college/studio partners Duke Erikson and Steve Marker to write some demos that would basically be remixes in song form. Once someone commented that “it sounds like garbage”, Vig decided to embrace the name. Then they invited Scottish singer Shirley Manson after seeing her on MTV, and the band’s sound was completed with sly, dark and snarky lyrics delivered in a sultry way.

The band’s eponymous debut album was a surprise hit upon release in August 1995, selling more than 4 million copies worldwide. Follow-up Version 2.0 (1998) was equally successful, even receiving a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Then the band recorded “The World Is Not Enough” to the eponymous James Bond movie, and the record industry started to bring the band down.

Beautiful Garbage (2001) was barely promoted due to a release too close to the 9/11 attacks, and underperformed at the charts. Fourth album Bleed Like Me (2005) had a troubled production where bandmembers were frequently arguing, and eventually the album’s tour was cut short and Garbage disbanded for 2 years, only regrouped in 2007 to record new tracks for greatest hits compilation Absolute Garbage.

In 2010, the band finally reformed to work on their fifth album Not Your Kind of People, which was released in May 2012 on the band’s own record label Stunvolume.

Their sixth, darker album, titled Strange Little Birds, was released in June 2016 and it was well received by the critics. It was followed by 2021’s No Gods No Masters, which is to date the band’s best critically received album since the 90s.