Shirley Manson on Bowie, cancel culture and Garbage's impressive new album 

The singer has sold millions of albums with the American outfit since the 1990s, and despite making her home in LA, remains as Scottish and forthright as ever as the band release No Gods No Masters 

 Shirley Manson, singer with Garbage, releasing new album No Gods No Masters. Picture: SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/Getty 

Shirley Manson’s first lockdown was back in 1994 during a bleak mid-western winter while recording Garbage’s debut album and a string of subsequent hits that included I'm Only Happy When It Rains and Stupid Girl. She had entered a black mood wondering why she had even bothered to try out for a band who “just didn’t cut the mustard”.

Now, 27 years and 17 million album sales later, she admits her demeanour was down to her own immaturity. “I was looking at it from a superficial standpoint. I felt we weren’t going to make a record good enough to transcend how we all looked. I had grown up in a band [Goodbye Mr Mackenzie] where we were looking at the coolest rock stars like David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave, thinking there is no way we can compete with that legacy.”