license, but I wrote it for JT. It's easily the most uplifting thing we've ever done. It sounds nothing like us; it sounds like a Shangri-Las song", Manson explained. Like the rest of the world, Manson had believed that LeRoy had been a teenage truck-stop hustler who'd escaped the streets to become a writer. Manson exchanged emails with LeRoy over the course of the album sessions. "I wanted to write an ode to transgender spirit, inspired by my interactions with this peculiar but emotionally generous creature I knew online as JT", Manson later recalled. On the Beautiful Garbage sleeve notes, Manson dedicated "Cherry Lips" to "The Terminator", another alias of JT LeRoy. In 2005, LeRoy was exposed as an invention of Laura Albert in articles published by Stephen Beachy, The New York Times and Vanity Fair. "I know a lot of people felt conned in the end," Manson explained. "I didn't. I just felt sad that a woman felt she would stand a better chance in the world if she was a man, that JT was 'dead' and wouldn't be part of my life anymore". Manson still felt that the books "remain a marvel and whoever wrote them is still a genius whether they are a man, woman or wilderbeast." "We were in different headspaces every time we recorded, which is why every song is different," Manson later explained, ""Silence Is Golden" is probably the heaviest song we've ever recorded and "Cherry Lips" the poppiest. They're juxtaposed right next to each other." When Manson recorded her lead vocal, the takes were heavily EQ'd at the tracking stage ("lt was tracked that way for effect", explained engineer Billy Bush, "it sounded weirder that way!"). Single release The first territory to receive a "Cherry Lips" commercial release was Japan, where Sony Music Int'l issued a five-track CD maxi of "Cherry Lips" remixes on December 27, coinciding with the announcement of Garbage's upcoming tour dates in Tokyo and Osaka. In February 2002, Sony followed up the single by issuing Special Collection, an exclusive extended play collecting together the international b-sides with artwork from the "Cherry Lips" music video. Across Europe, PIAS Recordings issued "Cherry Lips" on January 7, 2002, as a four-track maxi CD, two-track CD single and as a two-track 12" vinyl. At the end of January, in Switzerland the single debuted #95 and peaked at #85 three weeks later, before recharting