Shirley Manson: ‘If we solve misogyny, we solve so many other problems in our society’

Shirley Manson was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of a university lecturer and a singer. She attended the City of Edinburgh Music School and played in her school orchestra, while also singing in a local girls’ choir. She joined Goodbye Mr Mackenzie while still in her teens, signing a deal with Capitol Records in 1987 and releasing their first album, Good Deeds and Dirty Rags, then later recording and touring under the name Angelfish.

In 1994 she joined Garbage, releasing their eponymous debut album in 1995, which sold more than four million copies, as well as a string of hit singles including I’m Only Happy When it Rains and Stupid Girl. In 1999 the band recorded the bond theme The World is Not Enough – Manson became the third Scottish female to sing a bond theme, after Lulu and Sheena Easton. During a Garbage hiatus in the mid-2000s, she collaborated with several artists including The Pretenders, Kings of Leon, Iggy Pop and No Doubt. Garbage reformed in 2010. In 2022, they released a greatest hits album, Anthology. Manson lives in Hollywood with her husband.

In her Letter to My Younger Self, she looks back on her life, from teenage rebel to rock star.

At 16, I was failing at school. I had turned my back on my schooling for numerous reasons and I would sit in front of an exam paper not knowing the answer to anything, having done no study. There was no saving myself. I would sit for the obligatory 20 minutes, collect my pens and walk out. My teachers would look at me shaking their heads, and I’d see all my girlfriends studiously attending to their exam paper. I had a horrible sinking feeling. I was drowning. It was awful.

I sang in a girls’ choir called the Waverley Singers from the age of seven. We were doing challenging music at an early age and I stayed with them until I was 17. I don’t know what went wrong with my schooling, but music was always a pleasure. I got lucky. I went to an incredible state school with great music teachers, a choir, orchestra, music studio, access to guitars. That part of me was definitely nourished.

My big obsessions were Siouxsie and the Banshees and David Bowie. I think Siouxsie expressed my frustration and rage and desire to be disobedient, while Bowie appealed because he felt genderless to me. I didn’t read any machismo – he felt very strange. I’d never seen anyone like that before.

As an intelligent young woman, I realised early on how difficult the world was to navigate for me compared to my male associates. My father ruled our household in a beautiful way. But even at that young age, I resented the way my mother, who I thought of as a goddess, assumed she had to play second fiddle to my father’s comfort and interests and happiness. My father treated my mother with the utmost love and respect. But it irritated me that my father held the purse strings while my mum did the cooking, cleaning and shopping yet didn’t have the same authority in society. That bugged the shit out me and was one reason why I was such a frustrated, rebellious kid. I’m a loud, mouthy bitch – and that didn’t come out of nowhere.

Being a teenager is hell. When I was 13, I was bullied by a hard girl at school. I was confident, academia came easily then and I was from a nice middle-class family. I was also red-haired, and in Scotland back then, being a redhead was a source of derision. Hormones had arrived, and I can pinpoint being bullied at 13 as when I started to rage inside. My parents refused to intervene, said you need to figure this out on your own. I was livid. That was the beginning of the end of Sweet Shirley Ann. I started to self-harm, to cut myself, a few years later – I was still young, I still wore Wellingtons to school.

To be flippant, I would tell my younger self don’t panic, you’re going to be an internationally well-known rock star! But what I’d actually say is exactly what I tell my 16-year-old niece. Hang in there. Keep breathing. You have zero ability to control your future, so you have to walk into it – just by putting one foot in front of the other, you will find that you’re on your path.

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I fell into this world of being in bands and felt right at home. I’d joined Edinburgh Youth Theatre and met Martin Metcalfe, singer of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. In the summer when I was 17, he asked if I would play keyboards and backing vocals and for want of anything else to do, I was like, yeah, OK. I loved the wildness and freedom of being in a band. I come from a very conventional family and wanted nothing more than to be a bohemian. I didn’t want a ‘normal’ job, whatever that is.

Music always felt insecure because it seemed too good to be true. It felt like a little magic had been sprinkled into my life and I worried it was going to disappear. I was concerned about my future well into Garbage’s career. But I got an incredible education in Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. We traveled all over Europe, dealt with multiple record companies – I don’t know if I would have survived being in Garbage without that learning experience. We literally didit all.We were out there, we were wildlings, in every way you can imagine, we lived the typical rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. It was thrilling.Of course I took to it like a worm to dirt. I loved every minute and don’t regret a single thing.

Beware of the record company people, they are not your friends. That’s one thing I wish I’d known earlier. All these people that surround your band and tell you that you’re wonderful disappear in a nanosecond when the going gets tough. Then you find yourself completely alone. We’d spent our advance, we were all signing on, and we were screwed. I didn’t know how to put my life back together. That’s the horrible side of the contract between artists and commerce. Late-stage capitalism is brutal.

I don’t think anyone can be ready for global stardom. But I’ve been fortunate to have what I call a middle-class career in music. I am not part of the musical oligarchy – and there are more oligarchs in the business than ever. When I was growing up it was Madonna and Michael Jackson. Now there are a lot of people with a lot of power taking up a lot of the space. But Garbage exists as a blue-collar band. I can go anywhere, do what I like, and I’m not having my life thwarted by stardom. I live a very normal life, the pressures on people like Billie Eilish are insane.

I’ve been speaking about the misogyny that women encounter my whole career. And I’ve been sneered at, laughed at, dismissed as an angry feminist or a silly girl. I have always been bewildered by the anger of men towards women – it is a systemic problem that affects men and women. If we solve that, we solve so many other problems in our society.

I see more women holding senior positions in the music industry and a plethora of successful women dominating the charts. On the other hand, nothing has changed in the way men talk about women and their careers. I talk from experience. I notice how I am spoken about as an artist that has been making records for over 40 years compared to men. It doesn’t make me as angry or threaten me as much now. My career is my career. Nobody can take that away from me. But the disparity is wild. I recently played at Ohana festival [in California] and there was a photograph of me with Kim Deal and Karen O. Some magazine wrote the caption: ‘chicks rock’! If they’re going to belittle the three of us, what are they doing to people who haven’t sold millions of records?

When I think about love, what sticks in my mind is my beautiful mother. She was my main adviser on all things related to love. She’d been an orphan and was in care for five years. By the time she was adopted, family was all that mattered. She didn’t give a shit about anything other than love – and that was so present in our household. She showed me love was gentle and kind and should be enjoyable and fun. I had a remarkable role model so I was never attracted to so-called bad boys. Life is brutal. You need to lean on whoever you’ve chosen as your romantic partner. If someone doesn’t make you feel like they’re happy to see you when you walk into a room, fucking turn around, walk out of that room and don’t look back.

I just lost my dad in October. It feels really fresh but I know I said everything I needed to say to him. I feel loss and devastation, but I don’t feel regret. My granny was the first important person I lost and I would love to have another conversation with her. If I could relive one day, I’d like to be walking down Musselburgh High Street, holding my granny’s hand, going to the shop and picking out a ribbon for my hair. Then we’d go back to her house and she’d make me boiled eggs and toast soldiers. I’d be happy as a clam.

I grew up with politics. It was always in the background. My parents cared about politics because politics is about the care of people. That word has been obfuscated, but to me, politics is about civic comforts and the future of our society. So the idea that somebody isn’t political is insane to me. Politics seeps into every decision you make. Of course, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve fucked people off and hurt people. But nobody gets to live a perfect life. And my teenage self would be proud that I have stand up to injustice where I’ve seen it. I’ve had a lot of flak for speaking up about human rights, women’s rights, Palestinian rights, animal rights but I know my younger self would be cheering me on from the sidelines.

I have never lost that sense of wonder. Garbage played the Royal Albert Hall a few weeks ago for Teenage Cancer Trust and we were invited by Robert Smith from The Cure. I got an email from him, out of the blue. I was speechless. How is it possible for little Shirley Ann, who can remember hearing A Forest for the first time and fantasised about Robert Smith (who remains one of the most beautiful men in rock), that he knew my name? It would have blown my 16-year-old self’s mind.

It’s disgusting to say, I feel like such an arsehole, but I have met almost every one of my childhood heroes.David Bowie, Madonna, Siouxsie Sioux, Iggy Pop – the fucking GOAT – and I’ve sung with Chrissie Hynde. The list goes on. I had a photograph taken with BB King. What the actual fuck? It’s obscene. I live this insane life. No one woman deserves so many riches.

I keep saying to my husband, I can’t believe this is my life at nearly 60. It was one thing when I was young and in the throes of Garbage’s early success. I was in my 20s, still very beautiful, people wanted to look at me, fuck me, hang out with me, blah blah blah. As you get older, that all falls away. Now I’m one of very few women who have this kind of career. There’s probably about 100 of us globally in rock music, who have gone on into their 60s. Geniuses like Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde and Grace Jones are the first wave the world has ever seen of septuagenarian women having careers in music. I don’t know if I’ll be following them, though. I’m fucking knackered and we’ve got a big show tonight.

Garbage play a series of UK dates this summer as part of a European tour

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