Garbage's "Stupid Girl - A few things about the song

The label “perfect pop” was often bandied about in the 1990s, applied to acts ranging from Take That to Saint Etienne. But it made perfect sense when applied to Garbage, formed by űber-producer Butch Vig. Having helmed Nirvana’s Nevermind, Vig turned his part-time playing into a full-time group. The most notable of his recruits was Scottish singer and keyboard player Shirley Manson. Despite being the band’s only non-American, Manson was an instant fit, her emotional vocals offsetting the boys’ semi-electronic rock.

“A lot of the songs come from jamming,” Vig told The Band. “‘Stupid Girl’ happened that way.” Among the song’s masterstrokes was a loop from The Clash brought to the studio by guitarist Steve Marker—while its distinctive grinding sound was, bassist Duke Erikson told Addicted to Noise, “initially a mistake, which, when we slowed it down, actually fit the timbre and pace of the song and became the hook.”

The song was topped by Manson’s lyrics about a manipulative female doomed to a life of shallowness and deceit, although she said it was “about a million girls and boys that we all know.” “It could just as easily be called ‘Stupid Boy,”’ she told Raw in 1996. “It’s just a song of reproach.”

The song’s success was aided by a remix by Danny Saber—whose arrangement Garbage took to playing live—and a distinctive video by Samuel Bayer, who had directed Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” promo.

“There was a lot of talk about the dress I wore in the ‘Stupid Girl’ video,” Manson told Spin in 1997. “Everybody was, like, ‘Which designer?’ or ‘What style is that? It’s so gorgeous.’ I got it for fifteen dollars at a teen store in Madison.”