Garbage "Stupid Girl (Single & Video)"

"Stupid Girl" is a song by American rock band Garbage from their self-titled debut studio album (1995). The song was written and produced by band members Duke Erikson, Shirley Manson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig. "Stupid Girl" features lyrics about a young woman's ambivalence and is a musical arrangement centered on a repetitive bassline and a drum sample from the Clash's 1980 song "Train in Vain".

The song was released by Almo Sounds in North America, and Mushroom Records worldwide, as the band's fourth international single in 1996. "Stupid Girl" became the band's highest-charting single in both the United States and the United Kingdom, with its performance on the charts driven by an innovative music video and remixes that gained massive airplay across the world. The success of "Stupid Girl" propelled sales of its parent album Garbage into the top 20 of the Billboard 200 and into the top 10 of the UK Albums Chart.

Reviews of the song were positive, with praise for the production. "Stupid Girl" was nominated for two Grammy Awards, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group, as well as the Danish Grammy for Best Rock Song, an MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist and an MTV Europe Music Award for Best Song.

"Stupid Girl" began as a rough demo around January 1994. It was recorded during informal studio sessions with Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig in Marker's home basement recording studio in Madison, Wisconsin, prior to Shirley Manson joining the group. The band had been jamming using an ADAT eight-track, AKAI samplers and a small drum kit. Vig took a loop from the drum introduction to the Clash's "Train in Vain" and added further percussion including a sample of "Orange Crush" by R.E.M. Later, Marker was asked to create a bassline like that of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Suzie Q", "something that's almost like a Motown feel." Erikson finished what became the song's core with a jangly guitar riff.

After Marker saw Manson's group Angelfish on MTV's 120 Minutes, the band invited her to Vig and Marker's Smart Studios to sing on a couple of songs, but after a "dreadful" first audition, she returned to Angelfish. Manson eventually returned to Smart for a successful second attempt, when she began to work on the basic forms of "Queer", "Vow" and "Stupid Girl".

Manson's lyrics for "Stupid Girl" became an "anthem for a girl who won't settle for less than what she wants." She later added, "["Stupid Girl" is] really about squandering potential, [it's] our version of Madonna's 'Express Yourself', but a little more subversive." Manson intended the song as a rebuke toward a friend's foolish behavior: "A lot of females still find it difficult to find their own voice in society. It's just that women have a different set of problems from men... make the most of your potential." Manson added that "Stupid Girl" was "a song of reproach to a lot of people we know", both male and female, and that "we could have called it 'Stupid Guy,' but we thought another song about a strident female dissing a guy would be tedious."

Garbage wanted to write a song that incorporated a thumping, repetitive bassline to act as a hook. Continuing to develop the demo throughout the recording process for what would eventually become the band's debut album, the group decided to add textures, guitars and keyboards to make "Stupid Girl" dynamic rather than the product of complicated chord changes. Marker and Vig then added in elements of ambient sound effects throughout the audio mix, including the "glitchy" sound of a broken DAT player used during the pre-chorus. Marker had been dubbing between audio tracks, resulting in scratchy feedback; he sampled the sound and tuned it to fit the song, unintentionally created by an alternative hook. When Manson recorded her first vocals for "Stupid Girl", the band realized that the song's key was too low, but instead of re-recording the guitars, Vig re-printed them through a pitch-change patch on an effects unit. Erikson commented that the effects are "just ear candy, but they contribute to the character of the song, make the listener think in a certain way about the song." Additional percussion on "Stupid Girl" was performed by Madison musician Pauli Ryan, while the bass guitar line was played on the record by Milwaukee session bassist Mike Kashou, both of whom performed on several other tracks on the album.

Reflecting on the success of the song in 2002, Vig admitted: "People still ask us who the 'Stupid Girl' is, and that's impossible to answer. The song is sort of meant to be a wake up call. It could be about an ex-girlfriend. It could be about a rock diva that we all know, it could be about your sister. It could also be called 'Stupid Boy'." Looking back, he also stated, "It's impossible to predict what will be a hit. But subconsciously, I knew the song was good when I kept playing the same rough mix over and over again on my car stereo for months."

The music video for "Stupid Girl" was filmed on January 16, 1996, in a Los Angeles warehouse by director Samuel Bayer. The four-hour shoot took place after filming the "Only Happy When It Rains" music video. The "Stupid Girl" video was given a smaller budget, as Almo Sounds believed that "Only Happy When It Rains" would be more commercially successful than "Stupid Girl". According to Manson, the other band members were drunk and exhausted after three days shooting the first video.

The "Stupid Girl" video debuted internationally on February 1, 1996, and in North America on May 5. MTV added the video the week of May 13 and certified "Stupid Girl" a Buzz Clip. It was the band's third consecutive video to be guaranteed heavy airplay on the network. VH1 added the video in early September and featured it in a Pop-Up Video episode.

The video for "Stupid Girl" is a performance piece inspired by the title sequence from David Fincher's 1995 film Seven. The clip was shot in a warehouse decorated with plexiglas sheets upon which the song's lyrics were written. Bayer cut the film into pieces and soaked it in his bath, applying deliberate fingerprints and abrasions to the footage before putting it back together by hand. "Film is generally treated like this pristine canvas", Bayer later explained, "If it's scratched, it's considered ruined. I wanted to add to the excitement of "Stupid Girl" with a really organic video, something that had a handmade quality." To accomplish this, Bayer showed some of the filmmaking process itself; Manson is shown behind a clapperboard and reels visibly spool past the frame, while penned marks, sprocket holes, spots and reference numbers are seen. At one point, the frame lurches, as if to suggest that the camera operator has lost control of the camera. Bayer's colorist made use of sepia, blues, greens and reds to suggest that each frame was individually hand-tinted. Vig would compliment the video for mirroring the band's sound: "some of it looked beautiful, some of it looked distorted, and kinda fucked up - and it sorta described some of our music visually." Bayer later re-edited a second version of the video, with alternative footage from the original shoot, for a remix version of "Stupid Girl" by Todd Terry.

The "Stupid Girl" video earned Garbage a nomination for Best New Artist in a Video at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, losing to Alanis Morissette's "Ironic".

The "Stupid Girl" video was first commercially released on VHS and Video-CD on 1996's Garbage Video, along with "making-of" outtake footage. A remastered version was later included on Garbage's 2007 greatest-hits DVD Absolute Garbage, and was made available as a digital download via online music services the same year. The video was officially uploaded to YouTube in November 2013.