1995Released
4:36

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Queer - 2015 - Remaster. By Songfacts®.

In the term "queer" can mean gay, but in this context it means odd or different. According to Garbage drummer Butch Vig, the song is about a boy who is "queer" in this sense of the word, and his father sends him a prostitute to "make him a man." It turns out that the father also uses the prostitute and has some of the same issues, as we learn in the lyrics, "Like father, like son." The prostitute has a unique insight on their family dysfunction.

"Queer" was one of the first songs Garbage completed. Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson formed the band in Wisconsin in 1993 but didn't bring Shirley Manson on board as lead singer until the following year. They spotted her on MTV in a video for her band Angelfish that aired only once on the network. Impressed by her delivery (she didn't oversing), they tracked her down and brought her in to audition. A few months later she joined, moving from Scotland to work on their debut album. Manson had no prior songwriting experience but became an adept lyricist, writing songs about outliers and obsessives that put compelling storylines to the tracks created by her bandmembers, who are each about a decade older.

The drums use a sample from the Australian group Single Gun Theory's 1991 song "Man Of Straw."

Top Listeners

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Queer - 2015 - Remaster.
A♯Key
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
95BPM

Album

The album Queer - 2015 - Remaster is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Queer - 2015 - Remaster.
Infectious Music
© 2015 Garbage Unlimited, LLC d/b/a STUNVOLUME under exclusive license to Infectious Music, a division of BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited
℗ 2015 Garbage Unlimited, LLC d/b/a STUNVOLUME under exclusive license to Infectious Music, a division of BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.5MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists