Shirley Manson has not shifted in her stance on beach balls, even after she went viral for cursing at an audience member for relentlessly volleying them toward the stage during Garbage’s recent appearance at Good Things Festival in Melbourne. She hasn’t changed her stance on the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, either, and she’s using the viral spotlight to draw attention to that instead.
“The only thing that kind of shocks me a little is there’s been more fuss made about me offending beach balls than there has about 20,000 Palestinian kids who are now fucking under the dirt,” Manson said during a headlining performance in Brisbane. “So whilst the Brits are busy cooking up some kind of crazy, like, antichrist rhetoric, I would just like to remind you all what’s actually important in this life.”
“Maybe a beach ball brings you joy, and for that I apologize,” Manson continued. This apology followed the audience member who was on the receiving end of her criticism, where she sounded off with, “You’re a fucking middle-aged man in a fucking ridiculous hat … I want, literally, to ask people to fucking punch you in the fucking face. But you know what? I’m a lady, so I won’t.”
Beach balls have a certain prevalence in some live music spaces, and Manson simply isn’t a fan of the beach. In her initial response to the controversy, she doubled down. “I joined a band because I HATED THE FUCKING BEACH,” she wrote on Threads. “I joined a band because I wanted to listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure and be dark and beautiful… I am so tired of folks taking music for free and treating us all like circus performers.”
“If I upset you about your blessed beach balls, I humbly apologize,” Manson continued onstage to a sea of even more beach balls. “However, I would really like it if the governments of the day apologized for what the fuck is happening in Palestine.”
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Last week, the President of the United Nations General Assembly Annalena Baerbock emphasized the need for “decisive action” to end the conflict between Israel and Palestine. “All that has happened in the last two years has all underlined what we have known since decades. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved through illegal occupation, de jure or de facto annexation, forced displacement, recurrent terror or permanent war,” she said. “We need to ensure that the ceasefire is consolidated and becomes a permanent end to hostilities.”
Baerbock also noted that at least 67 children have been killed since the ceasefire began in October. In November, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that the Palestinian death toll has reached 70,000 since 2023, per The Associated Press. Of those deaths, 352 were counted after the ceasefire was enacted.
