Tag: Eve

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Gwen Stefani

Scared solo

When Gwen Stefani got the call that Linda Perry was ready to write with her, the first thing she did was bury her face in a pillow and cry. All she wanted to do was sleep. And now she was going to have to get up and get creative.

When she arrived at Perry’s house, nothing she did seemed fast enough. Stefani would go into another room to try to write some lyrics, and when she came back, Perry would already have the whole song nailed. “Dude, slow down. This is my record. Let me be a part of it,” Gwen thought. Read the rest of this article »

Blown away

Thanks to a radical hip hop reinvention and a series of credible creative hook-ups, Gwen Stefani has emerged in recent times as a major music player. Now, on the eve of her solo launch, the iconic blonde talks about boys, girls, celluloid dreams and making “a little dance record of her own”. Pop goes the superstar!

Somewhere within Gwen Stefani there must be an element of sadness, dourly gestating, imprisoned, waiting to break free. Not that you’d know it from the woman herself. You won’t get so much as a breath of negativity from eight straight hours in her company. Spending time with Gwen is like mainlining a curious, buoyant cocktail of Sunny D and liquid seratonin; it’s as if helium has magically found it’s way into the air-conditioning. She oozes essence of zesty, goofball, feelgood California. She’s got a succession of quickfire, cheerful punchlines beamed straight in from The OC script office on some delirious repeat edit and raises an iconic eyebrow by way of saucy punctuation for each one. If I had a dollar bill for every time I heard the word ‘dude’ coming from her big, smiley, slasher Hollywood mouth, I’d most probably have a couple of hundred bucks by the day’s end. Read the rest of this article »

Rock Ready

Gwen Stefani blows our minds once again. By Peter Davis, Photographs by Richard Phibbs.

It’s Gwen Stefani’s 33rd birthday, and the scene in No Doubt’s dressing room at an auditorium in downtown Los Angeles is cluttered and chaotic. Stefani’s operatic voice booms from the sound check as she belts out the song “Bathwater.” Five large pizza boxes and cases of Coca Cola, Diet Coke and bottled water are stacked near an enormous bouquet of birthday flowers. Drummer Adrian Young’s wife, Nina, strolls by cuddling their toddler son, who has been dressed in a black jumpsuit with skull-and-crossbones buttons. Techies race back and forth, fueled by venti lattes from Starbucks. Read the rest of this article »

Hella Great

With a new baby, an impending wedding and a breakthrough hit single – “Hella Good” – it’s no wonder the members of No Doubt are feeling fine in the summertime. By: Cara Lynn Shultz

The members of No Doubt are screaming for their lives. They’ve been electrocuted, blasted with fire, and now they’re plummeting off the side of a 10-story building. At the last minute they’re whisked to safety by… Spider-Man? That’s right. Singer Gwen Stefani, 32, bassist Tony Kanal, 31, and guitarist Tom Dumont, 34, are spending a rare free afternoon at Universal’s Islands of Adventure in Orlando, cramming eight rides – including the virtual reality Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man – into a 90-minute field trip. (Drummer Adrian Young, 32, is off playing golf.) After going on one stomach-churning roller coaster twice, Tom asks the operator, “Don’t you have any Snow White rides?” Everyone laughs, but he’s got a point – they could use a break. Read the rest of this article »

Rock Steady

Hip chick and No Doubt’s front woman Gwen Stefani gives us the lowdown on music, marriage and what it takes to get the flattest stomach in pop.

Who didn’t have Hey Baby stuck in their head for, like, weeks? No Doubt’s number two smash (their first biggie since 1997’s Don’t Speak) is so hip-swingingly addictive that it’s still being played like crazy on the radio. And as for Gwen Stefani’s smash collaboration with Eve (Let Me Blow Your Mind), well, it just goes to show she’s one of the hottest divas around. With bags of talent, a shiny, new ghetto fabulous look and fiancé (she’s getting spliced to Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale), she’s poised to take on the world, despite her protests that she’s just “a normal girl from Orange County.” Read the rest of this article »

‘We’ll make one more album, then I’ll get pregnant’

Gwen Stefani and No Doubt are back. But maybe not for very long. She talks to Caroline Sullivan

The dressing rooms at Top of the Pops are uniformly tiny cubby holes with barely enough space for a dispirited pile of weathered ham sandwiches, let alone people. Jennifer Lopez supposedly commandeered 15 of these rooms last time she was here. No Doubt have two and, despite being the band’s sole woman, Gwen Stefani has democratically crammed in with bassist Tony Kanal, while guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young are sharing a cupboard down the corridor. There’s not even room for their entourage of two – their manager and her assistant – who find themselves relegated to an anteroom wistfully known as the Star Bar. Read the rest of this article »

Gang of Four

Gwen’s still in love. Adrian’s having a baby. And the hip-hop world is on the phone. The long and surprisingly happy life of No Doubt by William Shaw

Self-doubt and heartbreak used to be Gwen Stefani’s twin muses. When her lover dumped her after seven years, she told the world about it. The drama had a neat twist since the jilter happened to be her own bass player, No Doubt’s Tony Kanal. Last year, when the band put out Return of Saturn Stefani continued beating up on herself. Now the 31-year-old singer is suffering a masochist’s worst misfortune: requited love. “Real love”, she says dreamily. She leans forward in a wicker chair and fingers her gold ankle bracelet. Hanging from it are the five letters that denote her Bushman: G-A-V-I-N. Read the rest of this article »

“Music is Sexy”

Gwen Stefani: “I love this headline so much, I’m going to kiss it.”

So says Gwen Stefani, and who is Blender to argue? But what else does this ska-singing, rock star-dating, Eve-supporting California mega-blond find sexy? And what does she think of our list of the 50 sexist artist of all time? Blender turned up on the doorstep of her Los Angeles home to find out… Read the rest of this article »