Shirley Manson | Through the Shattered Lens

I’ve always liked Garbage as a band. Only Happy When It Rains seems like a song that could have been written about me and, of course, Shirley Manson and I are both members of the 2% of the population who were blessed with red hair. Having red hair means that …. well, basically it means that we’re better than everyone else in the world and that’s just the way it goes.

Magnetized appears on Garbage’s 6th studio album, Strange Little Birds. I like this video because it’s creepy and dream-like and I’ve always wanted to have a mad scientist laboratory to hang out in. Not that I would actually want to do anything in the laboratory because that’s not really my thing. I’d just like to have it there as a conversation starter.

Enjoy!

I’ve been told by more than one person that this song basically is me. At first, I assumed they were just saying that because both Shirley Manson and I have red hair and people always tend to assume that all redheads are alike. But then I actually listened to the song and I was like, “I’m only happy when it rains? I’m only happy when it’s complicated? My comfort is the night gone black? Yeah, I guess that does kinda sound like me…”

And then I watched the video, which is basically Shirley singing and dancing in a dilapidated warehouse while the other members of the band destroy stuff in the background and I immediately had flashbacks to when I was going to college and me and my friends would spend the occasional weekend exploring an abandoned and/or condemned building. And I was like, “I guess this song basically is me!”

This video was directed by Samuel Bayer. Bayer has directed close to a 100 videos, for everyone from Maroon 5 to P!nk to Nirvana. Bayer directed Nirvana’s famous Smells Like Teen Spirit video. And, just by doing quick check, I see that Val has actually reviewed two other videos directed by Bayer: Zombie by the Cranberries and No Rain by Blind Melon.

Enjoy!