Shut Your Mouth (Garbage Song) - Single Release

Single Release

On April 8, 2002, "Shut Your Mouth" was announced as the fourth single from Beautiful Garbage by Shirley Manson herself, during a Garbage concert broadcast live throughout Europe on MTV. The band had already pre-empted active single promotion by recording both "Shut Your Mouth" and a cover of Rolling Stones' 1971 single "Wild Horses" for Re:Covered, a new BBC Choice music show where contemporary artists performed their new single and an old classic. The show was scheduled to air in June, when Mushroom Records UK had planned to release "Shut Your Mouth" across Europe to coincide with Garbage's booked Glastonbury performance and European tour. After the failure of third album single, "Breaking Up the Girl", and despite promotional discs already having been distributed, Mushroom cancelled the UK's June release date of "Shut Your Mouth".

PIAS Recordings released "Shut Your Mouth" in Germany on June 24 to coincide with the band's German tour dates. The single was released a CD maxi featuring b-side "Happiness Pt.2" and two live tracks: "Wild Horses" and "Only Happy When it Rains". Garbage made their first live appearance on a German television show on June 24, performing "Shut Your Mouth" on TV total, while the animated music video for "Shut Your Mouth" had began airing on MTV networks from June 18. PIAS then issued the single in other European territories from July 8.

Garbage regrouped at the end of August 2002 to actively promote "Shut Your Mouth" in the UK with two club dates at London's Electric Ballroom (which were filmed for BBC documentary series Roadies); the band performed the single on August 27 at that year's Kerrang! Awards, and completed two pre-records for both Top Of The Pops and Popworld to be broadcast nearer the release date. Manson also appeared on breakast show RI:SE to discuss the song, while Mushroom ran print ads for the single in Kerrang! and NME music magazines. Rejecting the artwork used for the single in Europe, Mushroom commissioned a new photoshoot so that the single cover would feature Manson's image (this was a first for Garbage, who had never appeared on the covers of their singles or albums before). Mushroom also commissioned new remixes and a live music video for the UK release; the video debuting online and on Kerrang! TV on September 16.

Mushroom Records finally released "Shut Your Mouth" in the UK on September 23; the single was marketed as a three CD single set, each in card sleeves, with a card wallet with the first disc to store the whole set. Each disc was strictly limited to 5,000 copies. Spread across the formats were three new b-sides exclusive to the UK release of "Shut Your Mouth", Garbage having written and recorded them in Montreux, Switzerland while touring Europe, two new remixes of "Shut Your Mouth", and on the third disc, their live recording of "Wild Horses". This last disc was released in conjunction with Blaze Television and BBC Worldwide, due to the licensing arrangements made by the BBC to feature "Wild Horses" on Re:Covered earlier that year. On September 29, "Shut Your Mouth" charted at #20. This position was the highest reached by any of the four Beautiful Garbage singles on the UK Singles Chart. The following week, "Shut Your Mouth" dropped out of the Top 75; this was the first instance in the fifty-year history of the UK Singles Chart where a Top Twenty track did so.

FMR released "Shut Your Mouth" in Australia on September 2 in its original format configuration; a single CD maxi featuring the same b-sides and live tracks as in the European release; pre-empting an Australian Tour Edition re-release of the Beautiful Garbage on September 16. "Shut Your Mouth" peaked at #74 on the ARIA Singles chart. Garbage's world tour returned to Australia the following month; on October 8, the band performed "Shut Your Mouth" on talk show Rove.

In October 2002, Garbage returned to perform a co-headlining tour of North America with No Doubt and The Distillers. Although Interscope chose not to service any further singles from Beautiful Garbage in the United States, Universal Music Canada sent promotional discs of "Shut Your Mouth" to alternative rock stations across the country. Vancouver radio station 99.3 The Fox had been playing "Shut Your Mouth" since the release of Beautiful Garbage a year earlier. Interscope, however, licensed "Shut Your Mouth" to the soundtrack of the PlayStation racing game World Rally Championship.

"Shut Your Mouth" was retained in Garbage's live set for both 2005's Bleed Like Me tour and 2012's Not Your Kind Of People World Tour. Along with "Cherry Lips", it was one of the only two tracks from Beautiful Garbage to be performed on both tours. In August 2005, Garbage teamed up with Canadian electroclash musician Peaches to perform at AmsterJAM, a mash-up rock festival held at Randall's Island, NY. "Shut Your Mouth" was performed by both artists mixed with Peaches' single "Shake Yer Dix".