"Shut Your Mouth" is a 2001 alternative rock song by Garbage, written and recorded for their third studio album Beautiful Garbage. "Shut Your Mouth" was the album opener; it was also released as its fourth and final single. Composition and recording "Shut Your Mouth" was written and recorded at Garbage's own Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin during the year-long sessions that culminated in their third album Beautiful Garbage. "Shut Your Mouth" was one of the first songs Garbage completed; the genesis of the song came from the band setting up their instruments and playing music for three hours, while Manson spontaneously sang. "It came from Garbage attempting to do a funk jam," Butch Vig recalled, "and then Shirley went into the vocal booth and this Patti Smith-style stream-of-consciousness vocal came out". Vig later described "Shut Your Mouth" as "Sly & The Family Stone on quaaludes. Lyrically, Shirley Manson explained, "In a general sense, it's about keeping your own counsel. There are so many opinions out there and misinformation and everybody's got their own agenda". The band created a wah-wah guitar sound for the intro of "Shut Your Mouth" by recording a 1955 Les Paul Junior through an old DigiTech Whammy pedal into a Matchless Hurricane/Marshall amplifier 4x12 setup. Session musician Daniel Shulman worked on "Shut Your Mouth" during the first of his two visits to Smart Studios to work on the album. He quickly laid down a riff for the chorus which used a lot of common tones throughout the chord progressions of the song. However, Shulman spent a long time working on a "funky and busy" part for the verses. All the bass guitar parts on "Shut Your Mouth" were performed on a Music Man Sabre bass. Butch Vig recorded a funk jam for the middle of the song on a Drum Workshop kit; he then cut and pasted random beats using Pro Tools editing software to create a jarring percussive effect. "It was just sort of a straight pattern, and without even listening to it I started dropping beats in other spots. Then I just ran through that section, and it was pretty messed up. But it had a much more interesting... it's more of a breakdown section," Vig recalled, "I actually tried notating the recorded version, and it was like some insane piece of music." Vig used a thirty-year-old Roger Meyer limiter to saturate the drum sounds