Butch Vig was one of rock’s most in-demand producers having worked on albums like Nirvana’s megahit, Nevermind. By the mid-’90s, Vig was burned out from an exhausting schedule. Working with fellow musicians and producers Steve Marker and Duke Erikson, the trio begin remixing rock songs before hitting on the idea of forming a band to try making similar material of their own. After Vig tried his hand at recording vocals, the group realised they wanted a female vocalist to bring a new sensibility. They stumbled upon Scottish singer Shirley Manson in a video for her band Angelfish and reached out to her. There followed a series of meetings and auditions before Manson was brought into the fold.
Feature: Music Garbage – 1995 – Rock
At those auditions, rough sketches of Garbage tracks were in the mix, with Manson telling Billboard magazine in 1995, “There were only scratchy lyrics to songs like ‘Queer’ and had to ad-lib”.
The song acquired a new ambiguity with Manson’s lyrics, but she told Rolling Stone in 2015 that Vig had been inspired by a Peter Dexter novel he was reading. “It had something to do with a father taking his son to a prostitute,” she said, noting that she immediately saw the song’s appeal to outsiders. “I latched onto ‘Queer’ as an anthem for the LGBT community. That wasn’t Butch’s intention but that’s what it meant to me: It’s always been an anthem.”
Shirley Manson soon established herself as a beguiling and rebellious front woman. While the male members of the band had wanted a singer with a vocal style in the gritty mould of Patti Smith and Chrissy Hynde, Manson had a personality and outlook that was all her own.