Breaking Up the Girl

"Breaking Up the Girl" was the third single taken from Garbage's third studio album Beautiful Garbage, released worldwide in April, 2002. In North America, it was the second single from the album and the theme tune to MTV's Daria 2002 TV movie Is It College Yet?. "Breaking Up the Girl" was written by Garbage members Duke Erikson, Shirley Manson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig. Despite reaching the Australian top twenty, it became one of Garbage's least successful singles, failed to chart in the United States, and becoming the fifth single release in a row to miss the UK Top Ten. "Breaking Up the Girl" was written and recorded between April, 2000 and May, 2001 at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin during the writing for Beautiful Garbage. Manson first mentioned the song in November, 2000, when the band experimented with Beatles-like harmonies and ad-libs over the coda. Although it was one of the album's straightforward rock songs, Garbage couldn't agree on the bass/kickdrum pattern in the chorus, trying various transmutations of a one-bar phrase. Bass player Daniel Shulman created a McCartney-esque movement in the verse. Lyrically Manson felt that "Breaking Up the Girl" was "a cautionary tale. It's basically saying the world we're living in is harsh and you've got to live in the moment. If there's something in your life that isn't good then get rid of them." The line "I'm afraid there is much to be afraid of" comes from Andrew Greig's 1994 long poem Western Swing. The promotional video for "Breaking Up the Girl" was directed by Francis Lawrence and shot over December 5/6, 2001 in Los Angeles. Two version of the video were made. The first version released contained footage lifted from the Daria series mixed with montage footage of Garbage performing and shots of the band filming the video. The video was premiered on January 21, 2002 on MTV directly prior to the first showing of the Is It College Yet. The second released version, which became the main edit of the video, which was broadcast worldwide from February 2002. The video began with a CGI shot of a shattered rose, which disintegrated as the band appear. While Manson features heavily during the verses, the band perform together during the choruses. For the latter part of the video, all of the montage shots of Garbage disintegrate like the rose at the beginning, and the video ends with the rose reforming. The pace of the video is kept up using aggressive editing and cutting between shots filmed with zoom and fisheye lenses. The main version of the video featured as an Enhanced CD-ROM track on several "Breaking Up the Girl" CD formats. The video, like the song, did not appear on 2007's Absolute Garbage. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.