Girl" became an "anthem for a girl who won't settle for less than what she wants." She later added, "["Stupid Girl" is] really about squandering potential, [it's] our version of Madonna's 'Express Yourself', but a little more subversive." Manson intended the song as a rebuke toward a friend's foolish behavior: "A lot of females still find it difficult to find their own voice in society. It's just that women have a different set of problems from men... make the most of your potential." Manson added that "Stupid Girl" was "a song of reproach to a lot of people we know", both male and female, and that "we could have called it 'Stupid Guy,' but we thought another song about a strident female dissing a guy would be tedious." Garbage wanted to write a song that incorporated a thumping, repetitive bassline to act as a hook. Continuing to develop the demo throughout the recording process for what would eventually become the band's debut album, the group decided to add textures, guitars and keyboards to make "Stupid Girl" dynamic rather than the product of complicated chord changes. Marker and Vig then added in elements of ambient sound effects throughout the audio mix, including the "glitchy" sound of a broken DAT player used during the pre-chorus. Marker had been dubbing between audio tracks, resulting in scratchy feedback; he sampled the sound and tuned it to fit the song, unintentionally created by an alternative hook. When Manson recorded her first vocals for "Stupid Girl", the band realized that the song's key was too low, but instead of re-recording the guitars, Vig re-printed them through a pitch-change patch on an effects unit. Erikson commented that the effects are "just ear candy, but they contribute to the character of the song, make the listener think in a certain way about the song." Additional percussion on "Stupid Girl" was performed by Madison musician Pauli Ryan, while the bass guitar line was played on the record by Milwaukee session bassist Mike Kashou, both of whom performed on several other tracks on the album. Reflecting on the success of the song in 2002, Vig admitted: "People still ask us who the 'Stupid Girl' is, and that's impossible to answer. The song is sort of meant to be a wake up call. It could be about an ex-girlfriend. It could be about a rock diva that we all know, it