Breaking Down Garbage:

I first learned of Garbage by hearing it played in the halls by the overhead speakers between classes.  I was hooked, and went to get my first Garbage album soon after I'd worn out the Cranberries.  Soon enough I'd listened to Garbage 1,000 times too, just like Cranberries, and soon enough it became my new favorite band.  It may still be my favorite depending on how this competition plays out.

Garbage shows the same trends that appear everywhere else.  The British Isles keep on producing ridiculously good singers.  Later works are always inferior to earlier ones.  Bonus Tracks are always inferior to mainline album songs.

Six Garbage songs were merely 1-star, listenable.  Five are from bonus tracks and one is from their latest album.

59 songs were 2-star, actual music.

42 songs were 3-star, masterpiece.  That's 3 more than the Cranberries and thus the best band so far.  107 songs overall, which is 2 more than The Cranberries had, but even if both of these phantom Cranberries songs had been masterpieces, Garbage still would be in the lead, so that means they have more masterpieces even per capita than Cranberries.

Among bonus tracks, only two were masterpiece level and thus worthy of mention -- Use Me and Deadwood.  Absolute Garbage had one new masterpiece, Tell Me Where it Hurts.  The James Bond theme, The World is Not Enough, is of course also a masterpiece.  24 were just normal, actual music level, forgettable but still desirable.

With that out of the way, we can focus on the album by album breakdown:

Garbage:                                                                           13 masterpiece.
2.0:                                                                                   12 masterpiece.
Beautiful Garbage:                                   9 actual music, 4 masterpiece.
Bleed Like Me:                                        4 actual music, 7 masterpiece.
Not Your Kind of People:                      12 actual music, 2 masterpiece.
Strange Little Birds:          1 listenable, 10 actual music.

Bleed Like Me was better than Beautiful Garbage, but overall it's a continuously downhill slide.  Their latest album didn't have a single standout song.  But it's pretty easy to go downhill when your first two albums are both 100% perfect.  Every single song was a masterpiece for the first two outings, but the first album wins by the barest of margins simply because it had one more song (#1 Crush).

This is better than No Need to Argue's 85% masterpiece ratio by an impressive margin, and it's why Garbage is currently the queen of rock music.  It's hard to lose when you produce two absolutely perfect albums to start off with.

Next up is Loreena McKennitt.  With only 83 songs to work with, there's little chance she'll offer any real competition with Garbage or Cranberries.  But her per capita ratio might still be a contender.