"Blood for Poppies" is the 2012
lead single
A lead single (also known as a debut single) is the first single to be released from a studio album by an artist or a band, usually before the album itself is released and also occasionally on the same day of the album's release date.
Release s ...
from
alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...
band
Garbage
Garbage, trash, rubbish, or refuse is waste material that is discarded by humans, usually due to a perceived lack of utility. The term generally does not encompass bodily waste products, purely liquid or gaseous wastes, or toxic waste produc ...
's fifth studio album ''
Not Your Kind of People
''Not Your Kind of People'' is the fifth studio album by American rock band Garbage. It was released on May 11, 2012, through the band's own record label, Stunvolume. The album marks the return of the band after a seven-year hiatus that started ...
'',
released to radio worldwide and as the band's
Record Store Day
Record Store Day is an annual event inaugurated in 2007 and held on one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November to "celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store". The day brings together fa ...
single in the United States.
Garbage picked "Blood for Poppies" as the introduction to their return to releasing music: "We wanted it to be the first single because it encapsulates so much about Garbage. It's got the fuzzy guitars, and Shirley's vocals are so great. We felt that if this was the first thing that people heard from us in seven years, then this was the perfect track. It's uneasy, like you're in a constant state of paranoia."
Background
The nucleus of "Blood for Poppies" came from sessions
Shirley Manson
Shirley Ann Manson (born 26 August 1966) is a Scottish musician and actress. She is best known as the lead singer of the American alternative rock band Garbage. Manson gained media attention for her forthright style, rebellious attitude, and di ...
held to write her abandoned solo album project. The track began as a
dub-style
jam
Jam is a type of fruit preserve.
Jam or Jammed may also refer to:
Other common meanings
* A firearm malfunction
* Block signals
** Radio jamming
** Radar jamming and deception
** Mobile phone jammer
** Echolocation jamming
Arts and entertai ...
.
The song kept being refined to its component groove and
bassline
Bassline (also known as a bass line or bass part) is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, Dub music, dub and electronic music, electronic, traditional music, traditional, or classical music for the low-pitched Part ( ...
as Manson refined her own vocal approach to the track.
It was her idea to incorporate "
strobing vocals"
and "weird, glitchy vocal production elements" on the song.
Duke Erikson
Douglas Elwin "Duke" Erikson (born January 15, 1951) is an American musician, songwriter, screenwriter, film producer and record producer, best known as a co-founder and guitarist of the alternative rock band Garbage. Garbage has sold more than 1 ...
added clean,
vibrato
Vibrato (Italian language, Italian, from past participle of "wikt:vibrare, vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch (music), pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. ...
melodic lead guitar parts to the verses.
Steve Marker wrote the "monster
riff
A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or accompani ...
" and added it late in the song's development.
Synth
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and f ...
effects were created by running keyboards through
wah wahs and mixing the results with similarly recorded electric guitar parts, while the recurring
distorted guitar lick
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...
was recorded through an
amp mod into his laptop.
Drum tracks were largely created by layering live drum takes over a
drum machine; "Blood for Poppies" opens with heavily distorted
fill followed up with a funky drum
groove
Groove or Grooves may refer to:
Music
* Groove (music)
* Groove (drumming)
* The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s
* The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station
* Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station
* ...
, the verse then featuring open
hi-hat
A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist o ...
notes leading into each
backbeat
In music and music theory, the beat is the basic unit of time, the pulse (regularly repeating event), of the ''mensural level'' (or ''beat level''). The beat is often defined as the rhythm listeners would tap their toes to when listening to a pi ...
. During the
chorus
Chorus may refer to:
Music
* Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse
* Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound
* Chorus form, song in which all verse ...
, the pattern changes to a
sixteenth-note
Figure 1. A 16th note with stem facing up, a 16th note with stem facing down, and a 16th rest.
Figure 2. Four 16th notes beamed together.
In music, a 1/16, sixteenth note ( American) or semiquaver (British) is a note played for half the dur ...
hi-hat pattern. Inspired by a suggestion by Manson, the band worked the beat of the
middle eight
The 32-bar form, also known as the AABA song form, American popular song form and the ballad form, is a song structure commonly found in Tin Pan Alley songs and other American popular music, especially in the first half of the 20th century.
A ...
section around a
sample
Sample or samples may refer to:
Base meaning
* Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set
* Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal
* Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...
of the sound of a
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
's blades.
Manson wanted the vocal in that section to sound like it was a garbled
radio transmission
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...
, so the band treated her vocal with various plug-ins.
Bass guitar parts were recorded by
Justin Meldal-Johnsen
Justin Meldal-Johnsen (born March 26, 1970) is an American musician, record producer, songwriter and musical director. He is best known for his work with artists such as Beck, Paramore, Nine Inch Nails, M83, Air, and St. Vincent.
Meldal-J ...
.
"Blood for Poppies" was one of the first songs finished during the ''Not Your Kind of People'' sessions. "The song is meant to feel sort of like an abstract dream," Garbage singer
Shirley Manson
Shirley Ann Manson (born 26 August 1966) is a Scottish musician and actress. She is best known as the lead singer of the American alternative rock band Garbage. Manson gained media attention for her forthright style, rebellious attitude, and di ...
recalled. "The inspiration came from a story I had read in ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' about the
opium trade
Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed Capsule (fruit), capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid m ...
and also from watching the documentary ''
Restrepo''. It's not literal in any sense whatsoever but it's a song about disorientation and delusion and the human struggle to stay sane in the face of insanity."
Manson later explained: "Actually it's from a few stories... I use that as a backdrop for a story about maintaining sanity in an out-of-control place." The band added that the song was also a
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
for being in a band: "...feeling isolated and lonely. There's the line 'I miss my dog, I miss my freedom,' and that's
anson'sdog she's singing about".
Single release
From March 15, 2012, "Blood for Poppies" was given away free as a digital download by Garbage via their own band website.
In a statement issued to mark the free release, the band wrote: "We've always had the most amazingly loyal fans, and we wanted to show them just how much they mean to us by setting it free to them first".
"Blood for Poppies" had
leaked online earlier in the week.
"Blood for Poppies" was sent for "adds" at
alternative radio
Modern rock is an umbrella term used to describe rock music that is found on college rock radio stations. Some radio stations use this term to distinguish themselves from classic rock, which is based in 1960s–1980s rock music.
Radio format
Mod ...
in the United States on March 20, where it was playlisted by nine stations.
[ A week later, the song was playlisted by a further nineteen stations, including eight on the Triple-A format.][ Four alternative stations in Canada also added the song.] The same day, "Blood for Poppies" was released as a downloadable single across North America, and was made available as a free track to download straight-away when pre-ordering the downloadable version of ''Not Your Kind of People''. After a week at alternative, "Blood for Poppies" debuted on the ''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' Rock Songs
Hot Rock & Alternative Songs (formerly known as Rock Songs and Hot Rock Songs) is a record chart published by ''Billboard'' magazine. From its debut on June 20, 2009, through October 13, 2012, the chart ranked the airplay of songs across alternati ...
chart at No. 45. On April 20, a limited edition
The terms special edition, limited edition, and variants such as deluxe edition, or collector's edition, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints, r ...
7-inch single
In music, a single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. One can be released for sale to the public in a variety of formats. In most cases, a single is a song that is released separate ...
marking Record Store Day
Record Store Day is an annual event inaugurated in 2007 and held on one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November to "celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store". The day brings together fa ...
2012 was released to participating independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
record stores. The white-vinyl single press run for "Blood for Poppies" totalled 2,500 units, of which 1,900 copies were distributed throughout the United States, and was backed with
The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record company ...
an exclusive Butch Vig
Bryan David "Butch" Vig (born August 2, 1955) is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the drummer and co-producer of the alternative rock band Garbage and the producer of the diamond-selling Nirvana album ''Neve ...
remix
A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...
of the song.
In Europe, "Blood for Poppies" was released as a digital single across the continent on March 28. An Australasian release followed the subsequent day. In the United Kingdom, " Battle in Me" was released as the album's lead single instead, however "Blood for Poppies" was A-listed by Kerrang! radio
Kerrang! Radio is a specialist digital rock music radio station owned and operated by Bauer and forms part of the Kiss Network.
As of September 2022, the station has a weekly audience of 341,000 listeners according to RAJAR.
Stations
Hist ...
and a digital single was released to some music stores on May 7. The single was also released digitally in Japan as an album-cut on April 18. A month later, "Blood for Poppies" debuted at No. 97 on the Japan Hot 100
The ''Billboard Japan'' Hot 100 is a record chart in Japan for songs. It has been compiled by ''Billboard Japan'' and '' Hanshin Contents Link'' since February 2008. The chart is updated every Wednesday at Billboard-japan.com ( JST) and every Thur ...
, peaking at No. 47 in its second week.
Critical reception
"Blood for Poppies" has been described by ''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' as "a mix of crunchy and funky guitars during the verse" and an "infectious, sing-along chorus";[ while ]KROQ
KROQ-FM (106.7 MHz) is a commercial radio station licensed to Pasadena, California, serving Greater Los Angeles. Owned by Audacy, Inc., it broadcasts an alternative rock format known as "The World Famous KROQ" (pronounced "kay-rock").
The stat ...
's Nadia Noir claimed it was "a song which conjures up some of the shimmering distortion
In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...
, guitar tremolo
In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo.
The first is a rapid reiteration:
* Of a single Musical note, note, particularly used on String instrument#Bowing, bowed string instrument ...
, and the sensual shoegaze
Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop") is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volu ...
" of My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow
"Only Shallow" is a song by the alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine. It is the opening track and second single from the band's second studio album, '' Loveless'' (1991), released on Creation Records. Written by Kevin Shields and Bilinda Bu ...
", "albeit with the funkier, harder edge and Manson's sultry contralto
A contralto () is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type.
The contralto's vocal range is fairly rare; similar to the mezzo-soprano, and almost identical to that of a countertenor, typically b ...
vocals that make Garbage wholly unique". Rick Martin, of ''NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'', described the song as "some righteous noise and a proper poptastic chorus to boot," and remarked; "If only all seven-year itches came with as much squalling feedback and eardrum-bursting goodness".
Commercial track listings
*Downloadable single
# "Blood for Poppies" – 3:38
*US 7-inch single (Record Store Day edition)
# "Blood for Poppies" – 3:38
# "Blood for Poppies" (Heads Down Here We Come Remix) – 4:12
Music video
The promotional video
In video production, a promotional video is marketing or advertising:
Arts, media and entertainment
* Promotional recording, an audio or video recording distributed to publicize a recording
* Trailer (promotion), a commercial advertisement for a ...
for "Blood for Poppies" was helmed by fashion photographer Matt Irwin and filmed over four days between February 23–26, 2012 in Los Angeles. Irwin co-directed the clip with Aaron Brown of Focus Creeps, following a concept theme of "old surrealist films and photos". Visuals created for the black and white clip were inspired by surrealist artists, film makers and photographers such as René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte (; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and bounda ...
, Maya Deren
Maya Deren (born Eleonora Derenkowska, uk, Елеоно́ра Деренко́вська, links=no; , Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
and Francesca Woodman
Francesca Stern Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models.
Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred (due to ...
, while certain shots referenced ''Le Voyage Dans La Lune
''A Trip to the Moon'' (french: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French adventure short film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's 1865 novel ''From the Earth to the Moon'' and its 1870 ...
'' and ''Un Chien Andalou
''Un Chien Andalou'' (, ''An Andalusian Dog'') is a 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursuline ...
''. The video incorporates noir imagery, haute couture
''Haute couture'' (; ; French for 'high sewing', 'high dressmaking') is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design that is constructed by hand from start-to-finish. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became th ...
, 1950s glamour and stop-motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
astronomy shots filtered
Filtration is a physical separation process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture using a ''filter medium'' that has a complex structure through which only the fluid can pass. Solid particles that cannot pass through the filter m ...
to achieve a gritty, vintage effect. The retro look is the result of the video's post-production
Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments.
The ...
, special effects and editing; the "black and white" is sometimes grainy and burnt and the images often overlap.
Employing non-linear
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many other ...
montage
Montage may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films
* Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing
* ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film
Music
* Montage (music), or sound collage
* ''Montage'' (Block B EP), 201 ...
sequencing, Manson is seen singing while blindfolded, playing Cat's Cradle
Cat's cradle is a game involving the creation of various string figures between the fingers, either individually or by passing a loop of string back and forth between two or more players. The true origin of the name is debated, though the fi ...
, eating an egg, cavorting on a Malibu beach and hiding behind a tree. The male band members are featured in a surrealist dream situations. "We piled into a transit van with the ridiculously talented team of Matt Irwin and Aaron Brown and hopped around little pockets of Los Angeles creating a gorgeous surrealist dream. We ate ice cream sandwiches in the sunshine and laughed a lot. I didn't want the shoot to end," recalled Manson.
The "Blood for Poppies" video debuted on AOL Music
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
on April 3, following a live chat with the group on their Ustream
IBM Watson Media (formerly Ustream and IBM Cloud Video) is an American virtual events platform company which is a division of IBM. Prior to IBM acquisition, it had more than 180 employees across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Budapest offices. ...
channel. The video was published through YouTube and other music channels in United States on the same date, and debuted on Australian music channels on April 10. In the United States, the music video for "Blood for Poppies" was made available to purchase on iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
on April 3. An edited version, with the eye-cutting scene removed, was later included as a bonus feature on the 2013 release '' One Mile High... Live''.
Use in other media
*Season 5
A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...
episode 3 of True Blood.
Release history
Comprehensive charts
References
External links
Garbage official website
"Blood for Poppies" music video
at Vevo
Vevo ( , an abbreviation for "Video Evolution", stylized as VEVO until 2013) is an American multinational video hosting service, best known for providing music videos to YouTube. The service is also available as an app on selected smart TVs, di ...
.
"Blood for Poppies" Mini-Film
at YouTube.
"Blood for Poppies" live rehearsal
at YouTube.
"Blood for Poppies" Discography
{{authority control
2012 singles
2012 songs
Black-and-white music videos
Garbage (band) songs
Song recordings produced by Butch Vig
Songs written by Shirley Manson
Songs written by Duke Erikson
Songs written by Steve Marker
Songs written by Butch Vig