The year is 1994. Duke Erikson, Shirley Manson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig get together and start a band called Garbage. A collective devious smile supporting a “this is just too easy” notion appears on music critics’ faces across the world. Because for all practical purposes, if the band’s sound is bad, the name says it all really. In fact, the potential was there for the review of the band’s first album to be the shortest ever… just write down the band’s name. Fortunately for the band, the sound of their first album was kinda trashy, but in a “Give me more of that” sort of way.

Their debut album, Garbage, was an unexpected smash, selling over 5 million copies and reaching double platinum status in the UK, USA and Australia and yielded chart unfriendly hit titles like “Queer,” Stupid Girl” and, erm, “Milk.” Shirley also professed to being happy “Only when it Rains.” Not exactly the Happy Meal crowd it seemed. Yet, the tunes were catchy. The lyrics profound. The sound everything but garbage. Garbage spent two years working on a follow-up album, Version 2.0, which topped the charts in the UK and peaked at #13 in the US. The album was nominated for two Grammy Awards, Album of the Year and Best Rock Album, and sold over 5 million copies. And with hits like “I think I’m Paranoid” and “When I Grow Up,” the band was firmly establishing themselves as chart and movie soundtrack favourites. When Baz Luhrman was looking for a band to carry the soundtrack of his 1996 Leonardo DiCaprio starring adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Garbage was the obvious choice and “#1 Crush” charted all over the place. When the producers of the new James Bond movie “The World is not Enough” needed someone to croon the title track, Garbage became the very not-so-obvious choice delivering one of the best Bond theme songs in years.

But by 2001, the band struggled to sustain their initial success. The band themselves described their third album “beautifulgarbage” as their David Lynch record and it comes as hardly no surprise then that it failed to match the commercial success achieved by its predecessors, even though it contained one of the catchiest and most criminally ignored songs of the year “Cherry Lips (go baby go!)” In 2005 the band came dangerously close to splitting up when singles from the fourth album “Bleed Like Me” also didn’t ignite a chart spark, but the album managed to become their most successful record since the first. In a world of another-week-another boyband, the band stayed together and in 2007 we celebrate a career of a Scottish/American rock outfit who stuck to their guns.

This Greatest Hits Collection includes only one new song, “Tell me where it hurts,” a melodic anthem which might very well be the last song done by the musicians as a band. Rumours have it that Shirley is working with David Arnold, Billy Corgan (from The Smashing Pumpkins) and Jack White (from The White Stripes) on a solo project to be released sometime in 2007. But before that happens, it’s time to acknowledge that some garbage needs to be recycled. Their music still doesn’t fit and will always speak to others who don’t fit. And that’s fitting.