beautifulgarbage by Garbage

beautifulgarbage, Garbage's third album, hit the shops on October 1, 2001, and it finds the Madison four-piece deliberately smudging the sleek sound of their first two records. Shirley Manson, Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig spent a year writing and cutting it, producing it themselves, while Manson posted weekly dispatches from the sessions online, a blog before most rock stars knew what one was.

The record sprawls in the best way: sharper melodies, plainer-spoken lyrics, and rock guitars tangled up with electronica, new wave shimmer, hip-hop beats and girl-group sighs. "Androgyny" led the charge but stalled, and with thin promotion behind it the album never matched the sales of its predecessors, even as it topped the Australian chart and landed on a year-end top-ten list. "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go)" is the sugar rush that stuck. A 20th anniversary reissue in 2021 stretched it to three discs of B-sides, alternate versions and remixes.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.