Fearless Shirley

By Benedict Watts

If the publicity angle for Garbage's debut album was "master producer Butch Vig makes an album with a couple of other boffins and gets an unknown, sultry Scottish spunk to pout suggestively over the top of it," by the time the promotional push for Garbage's 1998 release, Version 2.0, was on, the pitch had altered considerably. Garbage '98 was "the world according to Ms Shirley Manson."

With her willingness to broach any subject with disarming forthrightness and a wicked sense of humour, Shirley Manson is a refreshing change from the "the talent will not answer any questions about anything-interesting" vetting of the Courtney's and Kylie's. On her whirlwind Australian stopover in mid-year, every magazine, radio station and newspaper in the country scrambled to get her uninhibited musings on sex, music, religion, a little more sex and anything else that came to mind.

In JUICE's Sex 2000 (JUICE#66) she audaciously declared her "Ten Commandments of Love." Under Commandment No. 4, "Thou Shalt Honour My Bodily Fluids", she stated, "I hate boys who are frightened of pee and shit and menstrual blood&hellip I want a man who will let me pee in his belly button. I want a man who will accept the bast in me." Shirley also professed a disdain for Y-fronts, preferring her men to free-style, or at least wear boxers.

Despite the charisma of Shirley and her tireless promotional jaunt, Version 2.0 has failed as yet to set the charts alight. Still, with her unconventional beauty, opinions and golden shower fetishes, and abundance of charm, Shirley Manson concreted herself as one of the most fascinating figures in music in 1998.