YMMV / Garbage

• Awesome Music: The first two albums.
  • There's an absolute genius somewhere that realized "Not Your Kind of People" hit all the same underlying themes as Metal Gear, and used it in the trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. One particular lyric about speaking a different language unintentionally foreshadows a major story element in the game.
  • Alternatively, some fans consider all their albums as this.
• Epic Riff: The My Bloody Valentine-sounding "Supervixen" and the singles, for starters.
• Fair for Its Day: The lyrics of "Cherry Lips" describe a either a trans woman or a cross dresser. If it's the former it might be considered to use some language not considered OK by today's standards, but at the time it was pretty progressive.
  • The positive intent is backed up by the band being incredibly supportive of the LGBT community in general in years since, and even featuring a trans sex worker portrayed in a positive light as the subject of the video for "Anonymous XXX"
• Fan Community Nickname: Shirley refers to her fans as "darklings" on her Facebook page.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A handful of fans who prefer the band as an electronic rock/alternative rock band will vow that the band's catalogue consists only of Garbage and Version 2.0 and tend to disregard everything that comes after.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Curve. Mostly one-sided, with a lot of Garbage hate coming from the Curve camp, but not the other way around. Garbage themselves are actually Curve fans (though Shirley acknowledged her first meeting with then was not great), and Toni Halliday admitted she liked Garbage but felt they were more "poppier" than Curve. (Dean Garcia hasn't said anything.)
• First Installment Wins: Their debut is their most critically and commercially successful album.
• Funny Moments: "Only Happy When It Rains" is a hilarious Stealth Parody of depressive Grunge culture of the time, if you're in on the joke.
• Heartwarming Moment: The band halts their concert for a wedding proposal to take place.
• Flip-Flop of God: The meaning behind "Queer"
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The video for "The World Is Not Enough" features an android that looks exactly like Shirley Manson killing the real Shirley before taking her place and blowing up a concert hall. Then Shirley started playing a Terminator who is strongly implied to have murdered and replaced a human woman (briefly played in a flashback by Shirley as well).
  • During a performance at the 1996 VH1 Fashion Awards, Shirley had a Wardrobe Malfunction, and commented on the occasion with "When did a nipple do any harm?" 8 years later Janet Jackson suffers a malfunction, and Shirley gets so mad at seeing it three days in a row on the cover of USA Today she writes a song complaining, "Sex Is Not The Enemy".
  • Similarly, the title track from "Not Your Kind of People" foreshadows the entire plot of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
  • Shirley's blonde pixie look in the beautifulgarbage era didn't really last long or gain any popularity with fans, but a few years later it basically became P!nk's iconic look.
• Les Yay: There's the joint cover of "Because the Night" with Screaming Females. Having two female vocalists share the lyrics of that song is automatic Les Yay. (Also, Marissa actually is lesbian.)
• Moment of Awesome: Shirley Manson's scolding message for Kanye West after he tried his infamous stunt a second time.
• Pandering to the Base: More critical reviews of NYKOP suggesed that the album was aimed entirely at long time fans of the band.
• Signature Song: Hard to pick just one, though "Only Happy When It Rains" and "Stupid Girl" are both strong candidates.
• Song Association: “Only Happy When It Rains” appears in Guitar Hero 5 and “I Think I’m Paranoid” appears in Rock Band.
• Values Resonance: "Stupid Girl", 25 years later, perfectly summarizes attention seeking on TikTok and other social media platforms.
  You pretend you're high
  Pretend you're bored
  Pretend you're anything
  Just to be adored
• Vindicated by History: A major change in sound for the band combined with its release coming out at the time of the September 11 attacks meant beautifulgarbage's release was destined for failure. However in the years since the album has become a Cult Classic more fondly remembered by the fanbase, with the two lead singles in particular becoming alternative LGBT-positive anthems.

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