Shirley Manson’s favourite David Bowie song
Before the great blurring mixing bowl of the internet came along, the 1990s contained a mere handful of truly pronounced aesthetics. As the frontwoman of Garbage, Shirley Manson embodied the alt-rock of the era with her mercurial style that was somehow full of bravura and yet entirely understated; she defined one of the few aesthetics.
Born in 1966 in Edinburgh, Manson was exposed to the arts at an early age through her mother, Muriel, a one-time big band singer. The safe sanctity that music offers would become a heavily frequented refuge for Manson as she was incessantly bullied during her school years. The effects of this would be tragic. The young Manson developed body dysmorphia and suffered from depression early on.
In adulthood, the trauma of a tortured youth led her to self-harm, drugs, sex, and mental health issues. However, music would remain a safe haven. And in a tale that has been repeated by legions of his fans, the bold individualism of David Bowie shone like a beacon of hope for Manson. He showed the world it was hip to be different.
Speaking on BBC radio’s Tracks Of My Years, she explained: “Around the same time as Siouxsie [and the Banshees], I discovered David Bowie. I actually had a friend at school called Lisa Cameron, and her father had an amazing record collection. She introduced me to like Roxy Music and Michael Jackson, but the one that captured my imagination was Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie. For the same reasons that I list about Siouxsie Sioux, I fell in love with David Bowie.“
Those reasons include a bold “challenging of the traditional rules“, along with fierceness and androgyny. This is not only alluring on a surface level – the sheer shock of it – it always brings a depth to their work that welcomes you into their world. As Travis said when we recently spoke to them: “The only way I can describe it is like all the lights came on. You’ve got this incredible range from epic songs to small songs, and it was almost like it gave you a window into another way of living, a more bohemian way of living.”
Expanding on the inspiration of Bowie, she continues: “This was a person that I was being told was male, but he was wearing makeup and high heels and just presented himself in an entirely different way to the way I had learnt that men were supposed to present themselves. I found it perplexing, and he seemed like an alien, and I’ve loved him ever since.“
Concluding: ”Of course, Ziggy Stardust is one of my Desert Island Discs, I would take that away with me, it’s sort of the soundtrack to my life in a way. I know that record inside out, every word, every phrase, every riff, everything about it. It’s magic.”
