Sounds like Garbage is done doing big North American tours and singer Shirley Manson isn’t mincing words about why. She says the decision comes down to “the thievery of the record industry”.
The band started off their Happy Endings tour in Orlando earlier this month, and Manson told fans they’re “unlikely to play many of the cities” ever again. Guess if you wanna see Garbage in North America, you should try to make a show on their current tour.
At their DC stop on September 17, Manson broke it down mid-show, “We have as a band decided that, due to basically the economics of the music industry, that we have to curtail our headline touring business,” she said. “It has, thanks to the thievery of the record industry, made touring very, very difficult.”
And while she admitted Garbage have “had a fucking great run,” her real concern is for the younger generation of artists, “Sometimes they’re sleeping in their van, sometimes they’re staying in really, really dodgy so-called motels and it’s dangerous and it’s really unacceptable and it really has to stop. Whatever’s going on, it really has to stop. It’s unsafe and it’s unacceptable.”
Manson called the economics of the road “untenable,” adding, “This is kind of the last time that we’ve decided we’re going to get on a bus and just tour all over North America… I doubt that we’ll do a tour this size ever again.”
Still, Manson made sure the night ended on gratitude, saying, “At times in the music industry, they’ve told us we’re old, we’re over, nobody’s interested, nobody gives a fuck. And then you lot came along. You were like, ‘get behind us, Satan’. And we won’t forget it.”
On Instagram, Garbage put it bluntly: “We are going out in style… That’s life my friends. Nothing stays the same forever. Everything must change. All beautiful things come to an end.”
Garbage dropped their latest record, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, in May ’25.
Do you think they’ll be back? Will they reconsider? Time will tell.
