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rfmcdonaldI'm disappointed in Garbage. 1998's Version 2.0 was fun, with songs like "Special" and "Trick Is to Keep Breathing." Both 2001's Beautifulgarbage and this year'sBleed Like Me left me cold, unmoved by their too-perfect electronica-enhanced alternative rock spectacle.
I do still like Garbage. Even on their later albums, they have some authentically moving songs. Version 2.0, though showing signs of the fatigue that would overtake them later, is still fun seven years later. Their self-titled debut of 1995 remains a brilliant production. "Only Happy When It Rains"? It, too, is a classic.
Garbage was assembled in the aftermath of the grunge/alternative explosion of the early 1990s, just one year after Kurt Cobain's suicide. Producer Butch Vig joined together with fellow producers Steve Marker and Duke Erikson to form a band. Looking for a singer, they saw--played for the first time on MTV--the video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me" and were caught by the lead singer, Shirley Manson. They contacted her, brought her over to their studio and Minneapolis, and began recording.
The band produced a massive hit album and multiple hit singles. "Stupid Girl" was apparently the biggest single off of Garbage, and I do like it, right down to the catchy if depressing chorus ("You stupid girl/You stupid girl/All you had you wasted/All you had you wasted"). "Only Happy When It Rains," though, is distinctive. I remember catching the video for "Only Happy When It Rains" on Muchmusic, seeing Shirley Manson vamping in a decrepit warehouse/art installation as her bandmates smashed instruments, segueing before it cut to her trying to hide from a circle of children dressed, crouching and hiding as the almost-tactile guitars wound the song down. The visuals were spectacular; the song, thankfully, was up to the video's standards.
I've skimmed bits of Break, Blow, Burn already. I'd heard about her chapter on Sylvia Plath's incendiary "Daddy", and I wasn't disappointed. Paglia starts her analysis by calling the poem "garish, sarcastic, and profane," marrying the "personal to the political against the violent backdrop of modern history," a "rollicking nursery rhyme recast as a horror movie" (167). She ends her analysis by suggesting that Plath's peers lie not in the realm of modern poetry but rather in the realm of popular music, with Plath as the "first female rocker" with her "sneering sardonicism and piercing propulsiveness" (176).
Would I claim Shirley Manson as one of Plath's successors? Why not? Apart from the coincidence noted by The Independent that many of Manson's early songs, including "Only Happy When It Rains," were inspired by her own struggle with depression, and noting that in the song's performance Shirley Manson sets into her lyrics just two or three seconds after the song begins, her lyrics are poetic in their wordplay, exaggerating as they do the gloom commonly held to be an integral part of the alternative music scene. It's impossible to avoid the contradictions involved in "I'm only happy when it rains/I'm only happy when it's complicated/And though I know you can't appreciate it/I'm only happy when it rains." Too, the passive-aggressiveness of "I didn't accidentally tell you that/I'm only happy when it rains"--Manson's insistence that she wants the listener to know this, that she isn't telling just anyone--is delivered in the form of a confidence to someone who's concerned and, perhaps, is now too deeply implicated to save himself.
The lyrics of "Only Happy When It Rains" aren't as conscious as the Plath's "Daddy." They don't offer up any kind of solution to the crisis, and while there's a suggestion that the singer is seeking out causes for depression ("Pour some misery down on me") her motives aren't expounded upon. There is, in Manson's lyrics, only the certainty that she'll continue to despair and that the listener won't be able to avoid hearing all about her "new obsession." But then, it's a four-minute pop song: It doesn't have to do that. It just has to exist and please the listener with its hummable melodies and enjoyably complex lyrics. And it does.
I do still like Garbage. Even on their later albums, they have some authentically moving songs. Version 2.0, though showing signs of the fatigue that would overtake them later, is still fun seven years later. Their self-titled debut of 1995 remains a brilliant production. "Only Happy When It Rains"? It, too, is a classic.
I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains
You know I love it when the news is bad
And why it feels so good to feel so sad
I'm only happy when it rains
Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me
Garbage was assembled in the aftermath of the grunge/alternative explosion of the early 1990s, just one year after Kurt Cobain's suicide. Producer Butch Vig joined together with fellow producers Steve Marker and Duke Erikson to form a band. Looking for a singer, they saw--played for the first time on MTV--the video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me" and were caught by the lead singer, Shirley Manson. They contacted her, brought her over to their studio and Minneapolis, and began recording.
The band produced a massive hit album and multiple hit singles. "Stupid Girl" was apparently the biggest single off of Garbage, and I do like it, right down to the catchy if depressing chorus ("You stupid girl/You stupid girl/All you had you wasted/All you had you wasted"). "Only Happy When It Rains," though, is distinctive. I remember catching the video for "Only Happy When It Rains" on Muchmusic, seeing Shirley Manson vamping in a decrepit warehouse/art installation as her bandmates smashed instruments, segueing before it cut to her trying to hide from a circle of children dressed, crouching and hiding as the almost-tactile guitars wound the song down. The visuals were spectacular; the song, thankfully, was up to the video's standards.
I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains
I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains
You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains
I've skimmed bits of Break, Blow, Burn already. I'd heard about her chapter on Sylvia Plath's incendiary "Daddy", and I wasn't disappointed. Paglia starts her analysis by calling the poem "garish, sarcastic, and profane," marrying the "personal to the political against the violent backdrop of modern history," a "rollicking nursery rhyme recast as a horror movie" (167). She ends her analysis by suggesting that Plath's peers lie not in the realm of modern poetry but rather in the realm of popular music, with Plath as the "first female rocker" with her "sneering sardonicism and piercing propulsiveness" (176).
Would I claim Shirley Manson as one of Plath's successors? Why not? Apart from the coincidence noted by The Independent that many of Manson's early songs, including "Only Happy When It Rains," were inspired by her own struggle with depression, and noting that in the song's performance Shirley Manson sets into her lyrics just two or three seconds after the song begins, her lyrics are poetic in their wordplay, exaggerating as they do the gloom commonly held to be an integral part of the alternative music scene. It's impossible to avoid the contradictions involved in "I'm only happy when it rains/I'm only happy when it's complicated/And though I know you can't appreciate it/I'm only happy when it rains." Too, the passive-aggressiveness of "I didn't accidentally tell you that/I'm only happy when it rains"--Manson's insistence that she wants the listener to know this, that she isn't telling just anyone--is delivered in the form of a confidence to someone who's concerned and, perhaps, is now too deeply implicated to save himself.
Pour your misery down (Pour your misery down) x 8
You can keep me company
As long as you don't care
I'm only happy when it rains
You wanna hear about my new obsession?
I'm riding high upon a deep depression
I'm only happy when it rains (Pour some misery down on me)
I'm only happy when it rains (Pour some misery down on me) x 4
The lyrics of "Only Happy When It Rains" aren't as conscious as the Plath's "Daddy." They don't offer up any kind of solution to the crisis, and while there's a suggestion that the singer is seeking out causes for depression ("Pour some misery down on me") her motives aren't expounded upon. There is, in Manson's lyrics, only the certainty that she'll continue to despair and that the listener won't be able to avoid hearing all about her "new obsession." But then, it's a four-minute pop song: It doesn't have to do that. It just has to exist and please the listener with its hummable melodies and enjoyably complex lyrics. And it does.
