When a certain British tabloid trotted out some of its ageist clickbait last month, Shirley Manson was having none of it. Out came an article claiming that her band, Garbage, “look unrecognisable” in their new promotional images. Two years earlier, the notorious news site ran the same headline about her while she was on holiday. “So I knew it was directed at me,” says Manson. The singer called it out on Instagram to a tidal wave of support: “I’m nearly 60 years old. Of course I’m not going to look anything like my late twenties self?!?” she wrote. “I shall continue to age as I am… and no matter what they say about me, I will always – and forever – rock HARDER than most.”
Manson has rarely held back, either musically or personally. Since Garbage’s 1995 self-titled debut, she’s become one of alternative music’s most enduring figures with era-defining hits like “Stupid Girl”, “Queer”, and “Only Happy When It Rains”. Fame hasn’t come at the expense of her principles either, and she speaks openly about the injustices she sees and experiences. “When we released our last record,” she recalls of 2021’s biting comeback No Gods No Masters, “a male journalist and then a female journalist asked if I should be thinking about retiring.” She was 53. “My bandmates, who are older, have never been asked that. Men are not asked these questions.”
