Tag: Hollaback Girl

The Making Of Gwen Stefani’s ‘Hollaback Girl’

‘It’s a song that says you don’t have to answer back,” Gwen says. By Jennifer Vineyard

Going solo wasn’t as easy as Gwen thought it would be.

She’d originally intended to just take a break from No Doubt and make a fun little dance record. But, encouraged by her label boss and others, she’d decided to swing for the fences, and now that she was deep in it, the album suddenly didn’t seem like it was going to be all that much fun — and it definitely wasn’t going to be little.

Stranded without her longtime bandmates and plagued by writer’s block, she nervously turned to a host of producers, songwriters and musicians for creative help. This strategy proved useful, but it had a downside: The music came so easily to everyone else that it made her feel insecure — and jealous. “I’ve had a hard time with my ego,” she said, “because it gets bruised.” Read the rest of this article »

Crazy Sexy Cool

When queen of cool, Gwen Stefani, scheduled downtime with CG!, we hit her with your must-know questions on guys, fashion and, erm, bananas…

I love your solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Would you have tried this kind of music if you were still in No Doubt? Louise, 15, Essex
What happened was we’d made made a record and after that we said, “We’re going on a break.” No Doubt had never taken a break in 17 years. So I said to Tony [Kamal, No Doubt bass player and Gwen's ex], “Wouldn’t it be fun to do a dance record while we’re on the break, the sort of fun songs we listened to in high school?” So the idea was to work with new people and then return to No Doubt, but I never thought my solo album would be this successful. Read the rest of this article »

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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 »