Control (Garbage song)
2012 song by Garbage
"Control" is the second North American and fourth overall single released from alternative rock band Garbage's fifth studio album, Not Your Kind of People, and was sent to radio stations across the United States in October 2012.
Background and composition
"Control" was written and recorded during the 2010–2011 sessions for Not Your Kind of People in Los Angeles and is one of the examples of the "guerrilla style" approach the band took with the sound on the album.
"Control" was mostly composed by drummer Butch Vig, who also plays harmonica on the track. Vig explained "[m]y six-year-old daughter has a harmonica and she left it in my home studio. We were working on the song one morning and I picked it up and started blowing on it. I can’t really play harmonica, the part is dead simple, anyone could figure it out. I didn’t think we would actually use it and then we left it in the song, we mixed it. The band were inspired by the song "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin and used it as a reference point to bring guitars into the mix and seeing how far they could push their sound and channel the groove. Guitarist Duke Erikson came up with the bridge idea and added "we wanted to make the last chorus totally chaotic, so I opened up the gate and ran a pulse through it. The whole song sounded like it was out of control." Erikson recalls playing a Fender Telecaster on the verses and a Stratocaster on the second chorus, although "there might have been a SG involved".
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