Push It was the lead single off of Garbage’s second studio album, Version 2.0.  The video was directed by an Italian photographer named Andrea Giacobbe, who was selected after the band saw and was impressed by his video for Death in Vegas’s Dirt.  Though Shirley Manson said that the songs lyrics were intentionally meant to be surreal and that the song was about, “the schizophrenia that exists when you try to reconcile your desires and demons with the need to fit in,” even the band was surprised by the bizarre storyboards that Giacobbe prepared for the video.

What’s happening in the video is definitely open to interpretation, as the action goes from three nuns assassinating Shirley Manson’s rotoscoped “partner” to Manson living in the suburbs with a man who has a light bulb for a head.  Demonic children and aliens also make an appearance.  In the end, the video feels like a throwback to the early days of MTV, when it was more important to be weird and challenging than to craft your image for the adolescent Total Request Live crowd.  It certainly feels as if it’s taking place in a separate universe than the one where MTV is now the exclusive property of Rob Dyrdeck.

What does it all mean?  It doesn’t really matter.

Enjoy!