Marking a departure from the sound the band had established on their first two releases, the album was written and recorded over the course of a year, when lead singer Shirley Manson chronicled their efforts weekly online, becoming one of the first high-profile musicians to keep an Internet blog.

The album expanded on the band's musical variety, with stronger melodies, more direct lyrics, and sounds mixing rock with electronica, new wave, hip hop, and girl groups.

The album suffered from lack of promotion and the failure of its lead single "Androgyny" to achieve high chart positions.

[3] The triple CD set featured two bonus CDs, consisting of b-sides, alternate versions, previously unreleased recordings and remixes.

[10] More diverse than their first two studio albums, musically more melodic and lyrically more direct, Beautiful Garbage featured electronica fused with contemporary hip hop, with influences coming from 1980s new wave to 1960s girl groups.

Garbage acknowledged the broad span of sounds and styles, which included Prince, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, and Phil Spector.

"[14] Garbage decided the best way to start writing the album was to set up their recording equipment, guitars, keyboards, drum kit and a sampler and "jam" as a group.

[10] Their improvisation led the inspiration of a few songs such as "Shut Your Mouth", where the band played for three hours while Manson spontaneously composed melody and lyrics, while "Breaking Up the Girl" came from both Erikson and Vig strumming acoustic guitars in the studio lounge.

[10] Vig was not satisfied with his "swing" on a 6/8 groove written for a falsetto vocal Manson had recorded on "Can't Cry These Tears", so he recruited Matt Chamberlain to play the part.

[18] Due to Manson's growing confidence and technical skill, the band decided that her vocals did not require much treatment; "Shirley was singing so much better, and she was coming up with melodies that were longer and had more range to them...there wasn't any point in doing a lot with it.

"Til the Day Die" featured a digital "scratch"-effect, created by printing her vocal to DAT and using whatever edited passes sounded good.

On "Can't Cry These Tears", the four vocal parts were triple-tracked using different mikes, while a guitar riff was matched to her voice for a section of "Breaking Up the Girl".

[10] On slower songs such as "Drive You Home", Garbage were not overly concerned with phrasing and pitch, giving it "a rawer quality".

[10] Despite running a competition on their website to name the album, Manson's own working title, inspired by a lyric in Hole's "Celebrity Skin", won out.

[21] Shirley explained: "We took the title from "Celebrity Skin" because when I heard Courtney singing "beautiful garbage", it's like a great dichotomy and we nicked it.

In the United States, Almo Sounds and Interscope Records released Beautiful Garbage on CD, double LP and cassette.

The CD formats of Beautiful Garbage contained an enhanced element which users could access and remix four tracks from the album: "Shut Your Mouth", "Androgyny", "Breaking Up the Girl" and "Cherry Lips".

Created in conjunction with Sonic Foundry, using a customized version of their drag-and-drop ACID Pro music sequencer software, the remixes utilized samples and loops taken directly from the album masters.

[33] Interscope Records and Sonic Foundry launched a competition in November 2001, in which fans were invited to remix "Androgyny" by downloading free ACID Xpress software.

[48] Garbage were supported by Abandoned Pools and on some shows, by White Stripes; during the tour, Vig was taken ill (later diagnosed as Bell's Palsy) and was replaced again by Matt Chamberlain.

After a six-week break, Garbage returned to the United Kingdom to perform their last European shows of the year – two intimate club gigs in London.

[50] With Vig rejoining the ranks following his recovery period, Garbage headed to Australia to perform at the four date M-One festival across the country at the beginning of October.

[51] They then joined No Doubt, who were promoting their Rock Steady album, to co-headline a trek around the United States; support came from The Distillers.

[52] Kicking off on October 15 in West Kingston, Rhode Island, the tour was routed down the Eastern Seaboard, and into Southern States before heading to the Pacific Northwest region and onto the American Southwest.

[64][65] Tom Laskin of Isthmus wrote that the significant "sonic tweaking and abundant sampling" of Version 2.0 is discarded as the songs are supported primarily by "bass, drum, and guitar configurations".

Observing a musical theme, it is "the band's abandonment of digitally manipulated perfection in favor of rawer guitars and more immediate vocal performances."

It comes across with ideas and commentary that challenge rather than coerce, and the playing lacks the burnished, artificial quality that's characteristic of so much youth-oriented music these days.

"[63] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented that Garbage's penchant for absorbing elements from various genres, skillfully crafting them together is more evident in this album, in how they "approximate contemporary R&B with the sultry 'Androgyny', or the Minneapolis new wave bubblegum funk of 'Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!

"[56] David Browne of Entertainment Weekly observed Manson's continued "aggressive bite" complemented by "throbbing tracks like 'Till the Day I Die' and 'Shut Your Mouth'", as well as exposing "tender aspects" in "heartfelt" and "subdued" songs like 'Cup of Coffee' and 'So Like a Rose'.

He noted however that the band's "experiments with sonic expansion yield more mixed results"; "They thaw their sound by adding elements of trip-hop, which works for 'Cup of Coffee' and the first single, 'Androgyny'...But on a record that's more self-consciously varied than 1998's Version 2.0 other attempts are gimmicky and less successful.