The Creeps

Album: No Gods No Masters (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song recounts the terrible moment in 2009 when Interscope Records dropped Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson as a solo act. Garbage had already been let go by the label, and with Manson in her 40s, she feared her career in music was over.
  • I was so upset I saw them selling me out
    Right there on Los Feliz Boulevard
    They were selling me cheap out there on the street
    Poster-sized, large as life
    There were tears in my eyes and so I drove on by


    In the second verse, Manson recalls getting into her car and driving along Los Feliz Boulevard. On her right she saw an enormous poster of Garbage being sold in a garage sale for around three bucks. She recalled to The New Cue feeling completely humiliated. "I just felt in that moment the lowest I think I've ever felt, aside from losing people. I was utterly devastated," Manson said. "And I felt deep shame."
  • That horrible moment proved to be a turning point, and in the third verse, Manson tells us she started to rebuild herself away from the pressures of other people's opinions and label expectations.

    So I drove on home, my tail between my legs, hmm
    I'm deadbeat tired and a bit of a mess, hmm
    Feeling all refreshed and brimming with hope
    All my intentions are good and then I choke


    As time went by Manson had a transformative change in her mind, where she stopped letting negative feelings hijack her brain and giving herself "the creeps."
  • The Chilean film director, animator and painter Javi Mi Amor created the video, which combines footage of Manson with an assortment of animation techniques. He also directed the clips for the No Gods No Masters tracks, "The Men Who Rule The World" and "Wolves."

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