Music

Born in 1966 in Edinburgh (Scotland) she firmly took the reins of the American at the beginning of the 90s.

Before linking her destiny to Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson, Shirley bgean her career as a backing singer in Goodbye Mr Mckenzie (a possible tribute to the singer of the Associates who passed away too soon) and for a while she also did the backing for Angelfish.

The story goes that it was while watching a video clip of this forgotten group that Butch Vig fell under the spell of the stunning redhead. The boys who have been around her for a few decades are ultimately quite happy to let her undulate under the lights. Sometimes angry, sometimes lascivious, her voice is the ultimate signature of catchy melodies often hemmed with sonic inventions, a true trademark of the explosive Garbage cocktail. It is not certain that "Only Happy When It Rains", "I Think I'm Paranoid" or "The World Is Not Enough" (written for the 1999 James Bond) would have had the same success without Shirley's electric presence. Because the young lady is anything but a "Stupid Girl", to refer to their 1995 hit. Of course, Garbage's dazzling success aroused the interest of major brands. Shirley thus agreed to pose for a Calvin Klein campaign for its CK perfume. She later confessed in the pages of "Glamour" magazine that this experience helped her to better accept herself and to partially overcome the dysmorphic disorder (an obsessive neurosis linked to the image one has of one's own body) from which she suffered. The singer also does not hesitate to support the Causses that are close to her heart. Along with Elton John and Mary J. Blige in particular, she lent her face to the MAC cosmetics brand in 2002 for a line of products called Viva Glam, the profits of which were donated to an association fighting AIDS.

If, like many artists of this generation, Garbage today sacrifices nostalgic tours by exploring their old repertoire, it must be admitted that their latest collection of original songs on "No Gods No Masters" in 2021 has little to envy those that came before.

(MH with AK - Photo: Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Shirley Manson with Garbage on stage at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels (Belgium) on June 17, 2019 (Etienne Tordoir)