Supervixen

1996 song by alternative rock band Garbage

"Supervixen" is an alternative rock song written and performed by alternative rock band Garbage and is the opening track on their self titled debut studio album (1995). The song was titled after Russ Meyer's 1975 sexploitation film Supervixens but was influenced by Pier Paolo Pasolini's period horror art film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, which had been playing on a monitor above the soundboard at Smart Studios when the band were working on it. In the United States, "Supervixen" was released as an airplay only single to alternative radio in October 1996. At the time, "Stupid Girl" was still charting highly on the Billboard Hot 100, and the band's debut album had been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipping a million units within the United States.

"Supervixen" was written by Garbage in 1994 during sessions between band members Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, Shirley Manson and Steve Marker at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison session musician Mike Kashou performed bass guitar on "Supervixen". Manson felt that "Supervixen" was the hardest of all the debut set's songs to get right: "The lyrics of that song must’ve changed about 5 million times," adding that the track originally began as an ode to Chris Cornell. Manson fought with the rest of the band over a rap lite vocal she had ad libbed in the recording booth ("Now I want it too much, now I wanted to stop, now I'm lucky like a falling star fell over me") that she was particularly fond of. She won out, and the part was looped as a backing vocal towards the end of the song. Another part ("yeah, you worry too much, now it's got to be stopped") did not. Much of the song was built around repeated silences peppered throughout the instrumental sections. The idea for the silences came when the tracking tape kept slipping during mixing. Masterdisk's Scott Hull digitally removed the muted sections during the mastering of "Supervixen" to emphasize the silences. Reflecting back on this effect 25 years later, Manson stated: "These really incredible stops at the beginning of that song Nowadays that’s so easy to replicate because we’re all recording digitally, but what’s so astounding about "Supervixen" was [that] it was all done on analog. It was quite difficult to do when you couldn’t just flip a button." Vig and Manson declared that the song's controlling tone is tongue in cheek, but Vig made sure to point out that during the live performances Manson's domination "[was] also kind of becoming real every night."