Garbage’s New Song ‘Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty’ Smashes Patriarchy

Shirley Manson says it plainly in the chorus to Garbage‘s new single: “Get out of my face, don’t mess with me, we’re exhausted.” She’s totally over hearing your patriarchal complaints about your problems on “Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty,” the second single off the band’s upcoming Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, but at least she delivers the news in a memorable way. The song has an urgency to it, but also plenty of catchy pop hooks (even the background vocals, “Or I’ll scream”) that play off the band’s snarling guitar line. It’s a nice counterpoint to “There’s No Future in Optimism,” the improbably hopeful lead single for the record, due out May 30.

The song’s unusual title originated from a demo the band sent Manson, and titled it provisionally “AKA Bad Kitty” — then she started thinking about her frustration with patriarchal societal structures.  “When I was young, I didn’t really notice how things worked,” she said in a statement. “People like to shuffle older women off the lot, because you start to see the chessboard in a way you didn’t when you were younger. When you’re young, you’re wanting to get on with your life, have an adventure, do what you love, and you’re conditioned by the society that you grew up in, so a lot of the time you don’t see what’s going on. Then, as you get older, you start to see how things are stacked up against some of us — not all of us.”

“I am outraged by the way the world treats blacks and browns and gays and trans people and animals and women,” she continued. “Living in America over the last couple of years, the absolute war on women in America is astounding. All the rights that we felt had been secured are starting to get pushed back into the Middle Ages. It is something that I can no longer tolerate silently. It’s not just infuriating, it’s alarming. It’s frightening.”

Manson previously explained that she sees the album Let All That We Imagine Be the Light as “about what it means to be alive, and about what it means to face your imminent destruction.” She described it as a “tender, thrilling record about the fragility of life.”

Garbage will be demonstrating what that means this summer on a North American tour they’ve dubbed Happy Endings.