Composition and Recording
"Shut Your Mouth" was written and recorded at Garbage's own Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin during the year-long sessions that culminated in their third album Beautiful Garbage. "Shut Your Mouth" was one of the first songs Garbage completed; the genesis of the song came from the band setting up their instruments and playing music for three hours, while Manson spontaneously sang. As a whole on Beautiful Garbage, Manson's main vocals were generally not treated to the extent that they had on Garbage's first two albums; however her vocal on "Shut Your Mouth" was: the band subjected her takes to a number of Pro Tools plug-ins such as GRM Tools' Band Pass and Wave Mechanics' Soundblender.
The band created a wah-wah guitar sound for the intro of "Shut Your Mouth" by recording a 1955 Les Paul Junior through an old DigiTech Whammy pedal into a Matchless Hurricane/Marshall amplifier 4x12 setup. Session musician Daniel Shulman worked on "Shut Your Mouth" during the first of his two visits to Smart Studios to work on the album. He quickly laid down a riff for the chorus which used a lot of common tones throughout the chord progressions of the song. However, Shulman spent a long time working on a "funky and busy" part for the verses. All the bass guitar parts on "Shut Your Mouth" were performed on a Music Man Sabre bass. Butch Vig recorded a funk jam for the middle of the song on a Drum Workshop kit; he then cut and pasted random beats using Pro Tools editing software to create a jarring percussive effect.
The majority of the recorded work on Beautiful Garbage was to analog tracked through a Trident A Range mixing console; then fed into Pro Tools for recording overdubs, editing and mixing. The band's engineer, Billy Bush would then print a stereo mix of the ProTools tracks to two-inch tape and then add more overdubs to it.
Shirley Manson: "In a general sense, it's about keeping your own counsel. There are so many opinions out there and misinformation and everybody's got their own agenda. Take a split second to think before you leap. Which, of course, I never do. Ha ha!"
On October 10, 2001, "Shut Your Mouth" was debuted live by Garbage in Notre Dame, Indiana, during the band's first support slot on U2's Elevation Tour. The song was performed at almost every show on the Beautiful Garbage tour; at one Osaka, Japan performance in February 2002, Garbage replaced the verse riff with one from AC/DC's "Back in Black".
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