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Vocalist Shirley Manson shares exclusively with Billboard Español the significance of performing on this historic stage.
In their 30-year career, Garbage has graced major stages, including the Gardens of Princes Street in Edinburgh, the hometown of lead singer Shirley Manson, where the U.S. alternative rock band performed in 1999 to celebrate the opening of the Scottish Parliament. Now, they are preparing to recreate that experience at another historic site, the Zócalo in Mexico City, where they will offer a free show on Nov. 14, Billboard can announce today (Oct. 15).
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“It’s an extraordinary honor,” Manson told Billboard Español in a video call interview on Wednesday (Oct. 14) about the concert organized by the city’s Secretariat of Culture. “One that the entire band feel so tremendously fortunate to be invited to play, not just in Mexico City, but in the Zócalo itself. And we are really blown away, quite frankly”.
The Scottish-born singer still remembers the first time she and her bandmates visited Mexico in 1996, when they performed at the Teatro Metropólitan in the capital city. Since then, Garbage has nearly sold out every venue they’ve played in Mexico, confirming the strong connection they share with their local fans.
“Mexicans embraced us more or less before anyone else in the world. And as a band, you never forget that — the first people to reach out their arms to embrace you is something you never forget,” she says.
This year, Manson and her bandmates — guitarists Duke Erikson and Steve Marker and drummer Butch Vig — returned to Scotland to play at Edinburgh Castle, which, in the singer-songwriter’s opinion, is equivalent in her country to performing at Mexico’s Zócalo, the second-largest public square in the world, only behind Tiananmen Square in Beijing. At this important Mexican venue, the band will close their 2026 tour.
“Both occasions feel really profound and meaningful and emotional for us,” Manson notes. “I think that for any musician.”
Performing at Plaza de la Constitución (official name of the Zócalo) — a space filled with symbolism where politics, social movements, culture and religion converge — marks a milestone for the band and especially for Manson, who is known for her activism for women. Two female artists she admires previously performed at the same stage: superstars Rosalía and Shakira. The latter set an attendance record this year with 400,000 people, according to official figures.
“As a woman who wants to see all women flourish next to our male counterparts, I find it disturbing that the current American administration is standing on the necks of so many women… So when women are able to occupy spaces of such magnitude — or, you know, the Zócalo is the biggest stage in Mexico — I think it’s good for women across the board to see,” she says. “For women to be visible in our culture is important.”
Manson, now 60, recalls that legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was her first connection to Mexico during her teenage years. “That was my first experience of this country and this culture,” she shares. “All the colors and the mystical powers this land of yours.”
In fact, Garbage’s lead singer brought her admiration for Kahlo to their 2012 album Not Your Kind of People, where she appears in one of the set’s photographs wearing a braided hairstyle similar to Kahlo’s, along with skulls honoring Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), one of Mexico’s most cherished celebrations.
Garbage debuted in 1995 with a self-titled album that reached No. 20 on the Billboard 200 chart. Their follow-up set, Version 2.0, released in 1998, climbed to No. 13 and further cemented their reputation as one of the standout bands of the era.
Regarding the conclusion of their 2026 tour in Mexico, the “I’m Only Happy When It Rains” singer noted that the show will also close a decades-long chapter of extensive global touring and serve as a turning point for the band to redefine how they approach concerts in the future.
“So the Zócalo is marking the end of a 30-year serious touring life of Garbage,” she says. “By ‘serious’ I mean getting onto a tour bus and touring for months on end. As a band, as a collective, we’ve more or less decided that that kind of life is no longer sustainable for us. I’m not saying that we will not be playing again, because that’s actually not in fact the case, we will. But we are reassessing where we are at as a band.”