What USA × November 01, 1996
Welcome to the No Doubt tragic kingdom.
Just a girl? Gwen Stefani? No way! Dressed in leopard-print pedal pushers and running shoes, with her platinum hair pulled neatly back, No Doubt’s frontwoman is a cute and campy combo of Marilyn Monroe, Drew Barrymore and Cyndi Lauper – a total personality.
“I definitely see girls who are dressed like me, which is totally complimentary and makes me really happy,” says Stefani, as her brother films the interview on a camcorder as part of a keepsake for their parents. “It kind of puts a lot of pressure on you – ‘Okay, I have to think of something new now. I don’t want to look like them.’ “
The band, which formed a decade ago in Orange County, California, also includes Stefani’s on-again-off-again boyfriend and lyrical inspiration Tony Kanal on bass, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young. Together, they have built up an undoubtedly loyal fan base with a whip ‘n’ blend mix of ska, pop, punk, new wave and reggae. With the incredible success of No Doubt’s platinum-selling album, Tragic Kingdom, Stefani is fast becoming a wholesome, albeit stylish, role model.
“I’ve always been fashionable because I’ve always thought that fashion was an extension of your personality,” explains the outgoing and personable 26-year-old. “In my high school years, I never would wear the same clothes as anyone else. I don’t know if I wanted extra attention or what. I was a ska girl, a two-tone chick with a bob and little skirts. That was my fashion thing.”
Her songs are easy to identify with, too, especially for those who have gone through the pain and disillusionment of a failed love. In “Happy Now?” she talks about the finality of a break-up with a bitter tone; in “Don’t Speak,” she laments the loss of friendship when a relationship ends; and in “End It On This,” it’s the realization that the couple wanted different things out of life.
“A lot of girls have been able to relate to it, just because I think, me, personally, I’m just the normalest chick that you’ll ever meet,” says Stefani. “So I think there’s probably so many people who go through the exact same things that I have. ‘Just A Girl’ has been so rewarding to me, as a girl, as a female, only because I just set out to express what happened to me and all these girls come up to me and they’re so pumped and feel so much power just by the song. I never thought I could have any effect on anyone, let alone that kind of a thing.”
Stefani, a relative newcomer to lyric-writing, says it’s a struggle for her to put her emotions down on paper and is amazed every time she finishes a song. “I can only write about what happens to me and what I see in my life. And that’s all I’ve ever done,” she says. “The lyrics on this record are extremely meaningful to me and I think that’s what made this record really special compared to our first record (1992’s No Doubt). I think most of them are snapshots of time periods and you can kind of put them in order of the events that happened. But I don’t break down every night and like go, ‘Wahhhhh.’ ”
Part of the reason the songs are so meaningful on Tragic Kingdom is the fact that many of them are about the trials and tribulations of her relationship with Kanal.
“We’ve known each other now for nine years. When we first broke up, we were very open with it because that was the only way we knew how to deal with it. And we were like, ‘Yeah, you did this to me… ‘ Now that we’ve become bigger and it’s more public, there’s almost a backlash with Tony because I’ve been able to express myself and my side of my life openly to everyone, but he never got to. So in some ways, people are reading really into the lyrics and being, ‘How could he do that to Gwen?’ when it’s not really fair because he never got to say, ‘Well, Gwen smothered me and bla bla bla.’ It’s kind of hard on him because people take it so seriously.”
As No Doubt’s breakthrough song “Just A Girl” (from Tragic Kingdom and the Clueless soundtrack) ironically implies in its title as well as its lyrics: “Take a good look at me/Just your typical prototype” – Stefani is anything but.
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