Oh, that was such a horrible moment. You know, I’ve had these lyrics in my life now for 12 years. And I keep trying to inject them into an idea and it’s never really worked because they’re really precious to me and they speak of this moment in my life when I finally got dropped by Interscope Records. The band had been dropped a while previous to that but I personally got dropped. I got a phone call from my lawyer telling me, “I’m really sorry but Interscope Records are dropping you this morning”. I’m like, “Okay”. And I was trying to be brave, you know, and like, flick my hair and act like I didn’t care. I got into my car and I was driving along Los Feliz Boulevard, which is a big street very close to my home and, to my right as I was passing by, there was an enormous life-sized poster of Garbage being sold in a garage sale. And it had like one of these yellow selling signs on it, I think it was something like three bucks. And I just felt in that moment the lowest I think I’ve ever felt, aside from losing people. I was utterly devastated. And I felt deep shame, As I’m sure most people can imagine, I don’t suffer from shame very often. It’s not an emotion I really carry with me very often. […] I really felt like I was literally being put in the garbage. It was humiliating and I was devastated. And I burst into tears and I sort of slumped down in my seat and I drove on. But that was the moment really when I started redesigning myself, outside of other people’s gaze and outside of other people’s opinions. It was a moment of independence where I suddenly started to just rebuild myself with a strong foundation rather than a wibbly wobbly one, which I think I’ve I definitely suffered from terribly when I was young.

—Shirley Manson, via The New Cue

These lyrics tell a tale of great change in my mind. I had told myself that at the grand old age of 40, I was over the hill and I would never, ever be an artist again. I got paralyzed and depressed. I was driving along Los Feliz Boulevard, having been dropped by Interscope Records, and I saw a garage sale selling a shop-size poster of my band. I was so humiliated. But from that humiliation, I somehow managed to free myself from public perception and industry perception and expectations and focus on trying to have a good life and being creative and singing and making music and writing. My life bloomed from that point forward, so ‘The Creeps’ is important to me.

—via Apple Music