No-one, least of all Garbage themselves, had any clue that their self-titled 1995 debut was about to make them one of the biggest new bands on the planet, selling in its millions and spawning a run of classic singles in Stupid Girl, Only Happy When It Rains and Queer. It was the sort of meteoric, unexpected success that might have some bands scratching their heads as to how to repeat the trick, but when Garbage re-emerged in 1998 with second album Version 2.0, they sounded like a band revelling in the high-pressure stakes. As embodied in the record’s lead single Push It, they had their swagger on.
“We were high and brimming with an energy that doesn’t come around very often,” the band’s totemic singer Shirley Manson told this writer a few years ago. “At that time, we’d never any of us been in the position of following up a successful record, this was a brand new thing for all of us and I don’t think we really knew what we were up against, nor did we lack confidence because we knew how difficult it was going to be to climb back up a hill.”
