“I know I’ve told you this story a billion times, but, you know, a long, long time ago we were told we were not a ‘Brooklyn band,’” Garbage’s lead singer Shirley Manson recounted to the sold-out crowd at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theatre Saturday. A massive grin emerged on the Scottish front woman’s face. “I don’t want to toot our own horn, but it’s sold out,” The revelation set off cheers across the cavernous auditorium—a venue that, after years as a basketball court, was brought back to life last year with a renovation that restored its original purpose as a theater.
For any artist, selling out a show in a city where you were once told you “didn’t fit the vibe” is a victory. But for Garbage, the moment carried heavier weight. While Saturday’s set was part of a worldwide run supporting their eighth studio album, Let All We Imagine Be the Light (released May 30), the band stunned fans (myself included) by naming the tour the Happy Endings Tour. An Instagram post on August 20 confirmed what many had suspected–Happy Endings would be Garbage’s final headline tour.
“We haven’t played an extensive headline tour like this one in the States for almost a decade,” the band wrote. “..truth be told, it is unlikely we will play many of the cities on this tour ever again.” The post announced that Los Angeles-based glam rock revival band Starcrawler would serve as support for the entirety of the North American leg, and it ended with the following words:
“We are going out in style and we hope you will join us. That’s life my friends. Nothing stays the same forever. Everything must change. All beautiful things come to an end. We love you. - From all of us in garbage.”
Saturday’s New York performance felt like a victory lap for Garbage, who have collectively decided that after more than thirty years on the road, this will be their final headlining tour. (Shirley Manson made it clear, though, that the Happy Endings tour doesn’t signal the end of Garbage itself.) Since the pandemic, the band has logged miles as a support act for heavyweights like Alanis Morissette, Tears for Fears, and most recently My Chemical Romance, while also appearing at dozens of festivals around the globe. If Garbage does decide to tour again, it seems likely it would be in those capacities rather than under their own banner.
The energy at the Paramount couldn’t have been more different from the show at Franklin Music Hall earlier in the week. In Philly, I was struck by how subdued the crowd felt—something that initially left me a little disappointed. But as someone who’s been a Garbage fan for over two decades, I had to admit it probably had less to do with enthusiasm and more to do with age; none of us move quite like we did in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Brooklyn, on the other hand, was electric. The audience was in constant motion, and that kinetic energy seemed to feed directly into the band, fueling what turned out to be one of the best performances I’ve seen from them in years.
The setlist struck a perfect balance between career-spanning favorites and tracks from Let All We Imagine Be the Light. Highlights included “Not My Idea” from their 1995 self-titled debut—resurrected after more than a decade off the setlist—and “Parade,” the beloved beautifulgarbage deep cut performed live for the first time since 2019. “Chinese Fire Horse,” a searing standout from their latest LP, was also a thrill to hear. It immediately stood out to me on first listen—“You say my time is over / That I have gotten old / That I no longer do it for you / And my face now leaves you cold,” Manson sings.
The lyrics of “Chinese Fire Horse” cut to the heart of a harsh reality: the spotlight is rarely fair to women. You almost never see a headline about a man looking “completely unrecognizable in new photo” simply because he left the house without makeup. Society continues to place an unacceptable, disproportionate pressure on women to preserve their youth in a way men are seldom expected to–and Shirley Manson is not having it. When Garbage dropped new promotional photos ahead of the release of Let All We Imagine Be The Light, the tabloid Daily Mail posted an article stating the band looked “unrecognizable.”
“Quite a header from the Daily Mail yesterday,” Shirley Manson wrote via an Instagram story posted to Garbage’s official account. “What is THIS supposed to mean?!? The Druids look almost exactly the same as they have always done for thirty years, so I can’t help thinking this is directed at me.”
“Look – I’m nearly sixty years old. Of course I’m not going to look anything like my late twenties self?!?” the singer continued. “Quite honestly I think it would be a bit creepy if I did but hey that’s just me. Either way – this kind of language is weaponised to put a woman like me in my place. This gift is a fail. I shall continue to age as I am. I will continue to wrinkle and flub – lose an inch of my height here and gain a new inch or two there – but I will still look cute in my pyjamas with bed head and no make up on and I will always – no matter what I look like – no matter what they say about me – I will always – and forever – rock HARDER than most.”
Manson has always been unapologetically outspoken—she raises her voice when others stay quiet and refuses to back down, even when her views aren’t considered “popular.” Her candor has long been one of her most refreshing qualities, but in recent years, it’s become even more vital. Between songs on this tour, Manson has addressed everything from the horrors of the ongoing conflict in Gaza (the jumpsuit she wore during the Philadelphia show was emblazoned with “Free Gaza” on the back, and it was paired with a keffiyeh around her neck), to the current state of the music industry. At each stop, she takes a moment to spotlight their support act, the inimitable Starcrawler, while lamenting how difficult it has become for artists to make a living in the streaming era.
In fact, what Manson has described as the “thievery” of the record industry (a word she used last night during Garbage’s show in DC) is one of the driving reasons Garbage have chosen to step back from touring. “It’s not really right, you know, that a huge conglomerate like Spotify makes billions and billions of dollars, and then there’s baby acts who are holding down two jobs, taking their annual leave for two weeks, touring ‘round America in a fucking transit van,” Shirley Manson explained to the audience before the last song of their main set. She explained how different it was when Garbage first burst onto the scene, how the band would “sell a record for $7.99, and [they] would get a percentage of that record.” A practice that “doesn’t happen for young artists anymore.”
Not that the “old way” of doing business in the music industry did Garbage any favors. The band was publicly dropped from Interscope Records after refusing to appease record executives who wanted the group’s fourth studio album should feature “various mash-ups with pop stars of the day.” When Bleed Like Me was released in 2004, Interscope refused to promote it. By that point, tensions within the band were boiling over. The members were barely speaking, and Garbage ultimately imploded before wrapping the world tour for that record. But by 2010, they decided to take back control—reforming under their own label, Stunvolume, and releasing 2012’s aptly titled Not Your Kind of People (Garbage have been signed to BMG since 2022).
Not Your Kind of People marked a rebirth—a middle finger to the industry machine that tried to chew them up. Free from label interference, Garbage leaned fully into what made them great in the first place: defiance, vulnerability, and a sound that refuses to age. That independence carried through their next few records, each one pushing against the pressure to play it safe.
The night concluded with an encore comprised of two of Garbage’s biggest hits from their debut album, “Stupid Girl,” and “Only Happy When It Rains.” Pour your misery down/pour your misery down on me, the crowd roared along with the band. As the noise swelled, smiles broke across the faces of Shirley Manson, Steve Marker, Duke Erikson, and Butch Vig. You could feel decades of grit, defiance, and survival radiating from that stage—a band that’s weathered every possible storm and come out still sounding like nobody else.
So yes, despite what they were told all those years ago, they are, in fact, a Brooklyn band after all, and if this really is the beginning of their “happy ending,” it’s one they’ve damn well earned.
Setlist
There's No Future in Optimism
Hold
Empty
I Think I'm Paranoid
Vow
Run Baby Run
The Trick is to Keep Breathing
Not My Idea
Hammering in My Head
Wolves
Parade
No Gods No Masters
Bleed Like Me
Godhead
Chinese Fire Horse
Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)
Push It
Why Do You Love Me
The Day I Met God
___________________
Stupid Girl
Only Happy When It Rains
Comments