Songfacts®:

• Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson said of this song in an interview with New Musical Express: "It's about a search for empathy. We can forget so easily that people are the same regardless of their sexuality, religion, color or moral values. Regardless of the differences between people – their color, creed, sexuality or how they behave and express themselves – essentially we are exactly the same. It's about how when you are dealing with other people you have to remember that they are all carrying with them their own baggage."
• In a 1998 with NME, Shirley Manson interprets bleeding as a metaphor for self-expression: "I think good bleeding, really great bleeding is hard... To be great at bleeding, you have to be Thom Yorke, who's great at bleeding, a genius at bleeding. Bob Dylan is a genius at bleeding, where you touch the essence of something. And that's really difficult to achieve."
• In our 2013 interview with Butch Vig, he said: "I came up with that song idea in about five minutes and just started playing it on acoustic guitar. When I showed it to the band, we recorded it really quickly."
• In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Garbage drummer Butch Vig explained that the song was inspired by the movie Thirteen. Like the movie, the song is about individuals who need others to notice their pain, whether in the form of actual self injury (scars, cutting) or other types of harmful behavior. It addresses many forms of behavior including actual cutting, anorexia, alcohol abuse and gender role confusion. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Chi - Lincolnton, GA
• Shirley Manson name checks the author JT LeRoy in the lyrics. LeRoy, and her many writing personas, has inspired Manson's lyrics several times, notably in the band's 2001 single "Cherry Lips."
• In the video, Shirley Manson plays a retro-styled nurse accompanying doctors Erikson, Marker, and Vig on their patient rounds. It's the fifth Garbage clip helmed by veteran director Sophie Muller, who explained in an InStyle interview: "Shirley sees the video being about love and the nurse as a caring specialist."