Songfacts®:

• In this song, Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson gives her guy the boot, letting him know he's not at all special like she once thought. It gets rather dark at the end, when she says she's "tired of the violence," implying that this guy was abusive.
  
  At the time, Manson was married to her first husband, but the lyrics she was writing explored her insecurities - she called it "shedding skin."
  
  "The words are not literal," she told Q. "They're trying to create a mood. Music is cathartic and I can deal with things musically that I can't deal with in real life. Because I don't want to sit here with people and bum them out! I don't want to go out and meet someone and be a downbeat bore. Who wants that?"
• "Special" references two different songs by the Pretenders:
  
  1) Their 1979 song "Brass In Pocket," where lead singer Chrissie Hynde sings, "I'm special, so special."
  
  OK, that one's a little vague, but the next one is more overt.
  
  2) At the end of "Special," Shirley Manson sings "you were the talk of the town" the same way Hynde sings it in the 1980 Pretenders song "Talk Of The Town."
  
  Manson made sure to clear it with Hynde. They talked on the phone and Hynde gave her the thumb's up without ever hearing the song. Manson wanted her to hear it, so she sent it to Hynde on tape, who replied by fax:
  
  "I, Chrissie Hynde, swear that the rock band Garbage can sample my songs, my voice, or indeed, my very ass."
  
  She didn't ask for any credit or compensation.
• There's a lot going on musically in this song, which has an electronia influence and a propulsive beat. The musicians in Garbage - Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson - are all producers and work together on the tracks. Vig and Erikson set up their own studio (Smart Studios) in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1983 to record their band Spooner, but they made a much bigger impact with their work for other artists, particularly Nirvana - Vig produced the Nevermind album.
  
  Spooner disbanded, but in 1993 they started Garbage with Steve Marker, recruiting Shirley Manson from Scotland the next year after seeing a video of her performing with her band Angelfish. They released their debut album, Garbage, in 1995. It did a lot better than they anticipated, so they ended up touring for over a year to support it. When they returned to the studio, they were much tighter as a band but Manson was still a fish out of water, living in a hotel while the guys were on their home turf. That tension is expressed in her lyrics, which synched very well to the darkened tracks the guys were making.
• Garbage went sci-fi in the music video, which takes place on another planet in the year 3030. Directed by Dawn Shadforth, it's heavy on special effects, with the band members battling each other in spacecraft. It has nothing to do with the song, but was on trend with pop culture: the movie Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released around this time.
• At the 1999 Grammy Awards, Version 2.0 was nominated for Album Of The Year and Best Rock Album. They got shut out, but Manson made a memorable appearance in a dress that mimicked the album cover.
  
  The following year, "Special" was up for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group but again Garbage came up empty.