Shirley Manson
Shirley Manson
Shirley Ann Mansonis a Scottish singer, songwriter, musician and actress. She is the lead singer of the alternative rock band Garbage. For much of her international career Manson commuted between her home city of Edinburgh and the United States to record with Garbage; she now lives and works in Los Angeles. Manson gained media attention for her forthright style, rebellious attitude and distinctive voice...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth26 August 1966
CityEdinburgh, Scotland
I've got no timetable. I'm sort of sick of timetables, to be honest. I just want to live my life a little freely and not adhere to any schedule - just make music and have fun.
In the '90s, the radio was still alive with all different kinds of points of view, and I think that's why people are longing for that time. It was the first time that alternative music broke through to the mainstream.
People in day-to-day life tend to skim the surface of things and be polite and careful, and that's not the language I speak. I like talking about feelings, fears and memories, anguish and joy, and I find it in music.
I don't think we feel Garbage will ever be completely over. It's part of our lives, we still all get on well and love each other. We're taking a hiatus, I don't know if we're calling it a day. I don't think I'll ever make music with another band.
I love pop music. Who doesn't?
No, I like being a role model because I know how much comfort my musical idols brought me.
A lot of my friends are artists or musicians or single parent families and I'm totally aware of how difficult it is for them to make ends meet.
Being a musician makes you very - musicians in general tend to be quite sensitive, I think, to the environment around them, which helps when you are trying to interact with others on screen, to be aware, to be sensitive, and to try to understand what's going on in the scene.
We just wanted to make a record that sounded cool. So we stole from hip-hop, we stole from techno and blues and mashed them all up.
I've been on the go since January, and I think we all just feel a little burnt out ... We came to the conclusion that we shouldn't carry on without having a break. Any stuff that you read about our future is bogus, because it's completely undetermined as yet.
We have discussed this and I don't think anybody is interested in breaking up. We feel that this has been a really great tour, and we feel that we have really muscled through and produced a great record, and we just want to take some time off while things are really good between us.
We have discussed this and I don't think anybody is interested in breaking up.
Being the chaotic bunch we are, we should have put a press release together but we didn't. We were quite taken aback by how big a deal was made of it. But we love each other and we still want to work together. We're just taking a break. We've had a crazy decade.
We wanted to make a record that sounded like we do live, ... We sort of stripped away a lot of the production of this record and tried to make it bare bones.