"Special" is a song by American rock band Garbage from their second studio album, Version 2.0 (1998). It was released as the album's third single. The track contains a vocal interpolation of a lyric taken from "Talk of the Town" by the Pretenders.

Commercially, "Special" reached number 15 in the United Kingdom, number 52 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number 54 in Australia. The song received nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group at the 2000 Grammy Awards, and winning a Wisconsin Area Music Industry award for Song of the Year and a Citation of Achievement from the BMI Pop Awards. The sci-fi-inspired music video for "Special" also received nominations from music industry award panels, winning a D&AD Award, a MTV Video Music Award, and a VH1 Visionary Video award.

In 2007, "Special" was remastered and included on Garbage's greatest hits album Absolute Garbage.

Garbage began writing their second album, which would go under the working title of Sad Alcoholic Clowns before being retitled Version 2.0, in March 1997 in the band's label-head Jerry Moss's Friday Harbor, Washington, vacation house. The group demoed and made rough outlines for new songs, of which "Special" was one. When they felt they had made a good start, Garbage took the work they made in Washington back to their Madison, Wisconsin, base at Smart Studios and begin fleshing out the ideas and rough sketches over the following year.

Garbage intended their second album to build upon the framework, music style and musical template laid down by their first release; to create a rapprochement between the "high-tech and low-down, the now sound and of golden memories" and wear musical references to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Garbage recorded all of their work for the second album through a 48-track digital system digitally, direct to hard drives utilizing a 24bit Pro Tools rig.

Garbage employed touring bassist Daniel Shulman to perform electric bass on "Special", which he performed using a Fender Precision Bass run through an Ampeg SVT and then treated with "severe" equalization to achieve a Paul McCartney-esque Höfner sound to the part. The guitar solo intro (which returns at the end of both choruses) was performed on a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar. At the end of the first chorus, Garbage recorded a multi-tracked harmony vocal from Shirley Manson ("I can't think of any latter-day bands where a female is singing those sort of stacked '60's style vocals").

After the initial riff, at the beginning of each verse line, the pronounced word "I" was sung as a sample from the Beatles' "All I've Got to Do" song.

While experimenting with various phrasing over the outro to "Special", group vocalist Shirley Manson ad-libbed "We were the talk of the town" from the refrain of the Pretenders' song "Talk of the Town". The band were keen to keep the lyric, and to circumvent any potential legal problems, Manson contacted Chrissie Hynde by telephone to ask for permission to use the lyric. Hynde agreed to let Garbage use the lyric without even hearing "Special" first (and did not ask for any credit or royalties); Manson felt that she should send Hynde a copy of the song just to be sure, but before she could do so, Hynde sent a fax to Smart Studios giving her written consent. Manson was reluctant to let people think that "Special" was simply a paean to Hynde; her lyrics concerned a friendship Manson had moved on from after her friend had let her down. Manson: "Ultimately it's about those feelings of betrayal you have for people when you set your sights too high and expect too much and how that can lead to disappointment in the end."