Shirley Manson talks to CBC about how failure can kick you up the arse and get you moving, and 20 years of Garbage:

You know who's not excited about streaming music? Shirley Manson, tha's who:

"Now you get music for free. If people understood the economics of streaming they would be a little more sympathetic to an artist's plight," she explained.

Manson added that part of the blame lies with the record companies, who don't suffer in the same way that their artists do.

"It's a crime spree. I don't think people understand that record companies still continue to make enormous amounts of money. They strike the deals with the streaming companies," she said.

Well, yes, they do. While muscling to the front making it difficult for individuals to work directly with streaming services to get a larger share of the (face it) small royalty on offer per single play.

"It's a f**king racket," Manson added, before expressing optimism that a fairer system will emerge. "It's early days though and I do think it will be changed."

Maybe.

Although Tidal is dying on its arse, because its solution was to charge listeners more, rather than divvy up the take more fairly.

Which means hopes of a better world means either the tech companies, or the record labels, decide that they should give a bit more of their chunk to the artists.

The history of the tech and music industries suggest that Manson might be waiting for a long time for the sunny uplands.

Garbage have teamed up with Brian Aubert out of Silversun Pickups for their Record Store Day single. This is it:


Record Store Day is an annual event where rare records are hidden in shops for people to hunt down; the winners get to sell them on eBay at huge profits.

Vow by Garbage. Released twenty years ago this very morning.

Garbage have just announced plans to do a 20th birthday party for Queer...

Shirley Manson takes being wired into the electricity circuits with trademark good grace:

Want to learn some German with Shirley Manson? And some bass with Dave from Widespread Panic?

Of course you do. Let's go to Pancake Mountain.

Extra points for linking Kraftwerk and wurst, I think.

There's going to be an Anchoress video shoot. How would one prepare for that, Catherine AD?

Video prep morning. Or as I like to call it: staring at pictures of Shirley Manson from @garbage day. pic.twitter.com/ZqpzNePoaG

— CatherineAnneDavies (@CatherineAD) February 2, 2014

Yes, that'd work.

There's a certain degree of truth in Shirley Manson's biopsy on the music industry:

Speaking to Metro following the release of Garbage’s new album ‘Not Your Kind Of People‘ last month, Manson said: “It’s a shell of what it once was and the industry hasn’t got it’s head around the fact a lot of young people don’t listen to the radio or buy records – the industry has been slow to adapt and become a dinosaur.”

Ah, but there is a silver lining:

“When corporations become dinosaurs they get desperate and greedy and become involved in ugly practices,” she continues. “The good thing about the collapse is it’s got rid of characters who have no interest in music. The workers left at the companies are passionate and care about bands.”

Hang about... if the few remaining staff are passionate about music, but the companies are slow-moving dinosaurs, does that mean caring about bands is an outdated attitude as well? Or would it be better to have people who view music as "product" but can at least put together an effective twitter campaign?

Suspicions that Shirley Manson might be some sort of pop star superhero are growing, with the news that she had a bloke thrown out of a Garbage gig for hitting a woman in the audience.

Because this is 2012, the incident is on YouTube:

"You’re fighting baby, you gotta leave now. You can’t fucking fight, man. You can’t fight. I’m sorry, that’s the rules, man. We just need to all simmer down."

Theresa May wants us to choose who runs our police forces. Bagsy Shirley Manson for Thames Valley.

Last night, Garbage popped up on Jimmy Fallon. Look, NBC are sharing it with us:

[Buy: Not Your Kind Of People]

It's not exactly news, as she'd been talking about being back in the studio a couple of months ago, but talking to the Daily Record Shirley Manson has confirmed that she's working on new music.

What we've not heard before is why she decided to return:

Shirley said: "Friends of mine lost their son to cancer last year and they asked me to sing his favourite song, Life on Mars, at the memorial.

"We were all in so much pain but it meant so much to them that I could sing that song and it meant so much to me that I was able to do something.

"It made me realise how much music sustains people. I don't know why I turned my back on it."

While it's fun watching Shirley Manson be a killer vixen robot from the future, it's even more exciting that she's dropping hints about a new Garbage record:

"Guess who I just spent a week in the studio with?" Manson wrote [on Facebook], before adding, "Would you be pleased if I said one of them was called Steve and one of them was called Duke and another was a Grammy-winning producer?"

Well, perhaps. Unless it's former Brighton and Hove Albion captain Steve Foster, the corpse of John Wayne and Jim Jonsin. Because that would be a cruel trick.

With a best of collection due from Garbage in July (Absolute Garbage, in fact), there's the now-requisite new tracks to top the album off. The single is going to be Tell Me Where It Hurts which, musically, sees Shirley Manson return to her Chrissie Hynde tribute routine. The video, though, is a homage to Belle De Jour. The movie, not the blog:

Shirley Manson has signed on to play the Sophie Ellis-Bextor role in the latest UK anti-PETA advertising campaign. You can see the advert here; we would post it but it's quite grizzly and we imagine most of you would rather choose if you'd like to keep your breakfast down or not.

In Shirley Manson's latest tour diary, she tells how Piers Sellars, the British astronaut, took a Garbage CD into space to play. Only it was a Russian Bootleg. Dammit, does this man not realise he's stomping down on music?

Meanwhile:

Noooo!