Released: September 22, 2002

Songwriter: Duke Erikson Butch Vig Steve Marker Shirley Manson

Producer: Garbage

[Verse 1]
It was April tenth
I remember it well
It was so cold that year
It was colder than hell
And things haven't been good
For you, for a while
'Cause I'd been on tour
I hadn't heard

[Verse 2]
Ruth dropped in
With the letter you wrote
And we read it aloud
To prove that I could
And we were both laughing
'cause we know how you are

[Verse 3]
We never thought
Your quitting was good
We thought that we knew you
Well, I guess that we don't
Are you heavenly or
Just like the past?
We called you "the black penny"
Remember that?

[Verse 4]
The sea is wide
The streets are long
And there's blood on all our hands
With the catalyst gone
And only what's left to us
Is history built on dust
I was sweating on poet's words
Great nations and governments

[Verse 5]
Feat lies in victories
Eager and keen to please
Those junkies are everywhere
With their thousand-yard stare
We all end up the same
Like little lambs to meet their end

Garbage

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.