Tag: No Doubt

Gwen Born Again!

She’s hot, she’s the most beloved pop star in America, and now No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani is about to break out as a solo artist and Hollywood actress. Story by Jessica Hundley, Photography by Mark Squires, Styling by Andrea Lieberman.

She’s not the new Madonna. Sure, there are similarities - the platinum blond hair, silent screen vamping, the ever-evolving, always iconic style. But Gwen Stefani is defiantly her own woman. Rather than strained self-seriousness and ice-cool divadom, Stefani possesses the air of a girl midway down the first drop of a really badass roller coaster, an air of glee and triumph and just a touch of wonder, as if she still can’t quite believe she dared get on the ride in the first place. Read the rest of this article »

Blonde on blonde

Gwen Stefani has ditched No Doubt in a bid to be the next Madonna. Complete with English husband and questionable movie career.

“My album will probably end up being called Fuck You or something,” shrugs Gwen Stefani and then cackles for a while, shattering the silence of her floor-to-ceiling white suite in the sickly contemporary St Martin’s Lane Hotel. Read the rest of this article »

Rock idol

Equal parts punkette and starlet, gwen Stefani is about to go super-stellar. Scorsese’s new star and pop’s hottest hybrid, she’s far from just a girl, says Charlotte Sinclair. Photographs by Lorenzo Agius. Styled by Andrea Lieberman.

Gwen Stefani is half way through our cover shoot when there’s a security breach at the country house that’s serving as our location. While on a tour of the building, a group of blue-rinsed ladies stumble into the music room where Gwen is being photographed. If the peroxide blonde with flowers in her hairs stirs recognition in the octogenarians, it probably owes more to their memories of Forties starlets than any familiarity with the sexy, stylish, stiletto-wearing tomboy who fronts the Californian rock band No Doubt. Gwen is non-plussed, and smiles graciously, arching a perfectly penciled eyebrow at the group as they are ushered outside outside onto the lawn, their chorus of interest (’Goodness, wasn’t she pretty?’ and ‘Who was that?’) drifting in through the open window as the shoot resumes. The renegade OAPs could be forgiven for their ignorance, but Gwen Stefani - whose currency as a bona fide rock chick, fashion icon and budding actress is already soaring - is about to hit the big time. Read the rest of this article »

Dancing Queen

With Madonna lost in Kabbalah-land, Gwen Stefani, who is releasing her dance-pop solo debut, Love Angel Music Baby, looks set to take over as Top Blonde. Here, the No Doubt frontwoman and fashion icon talks marriage, movies, motherhood, and the future of her band.

She used to be just a girl. Now she’s just “Gwen.” Thanks to megahits with Eve and Moby, a hot clothing line (L.A.M.B), a fantasy wedding to longtime boyfriend Gavin Rossdale, and her film debut (as ’30s movie star Jean Harlow, opposite Leo DiCaprio, in Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator), the No Doubt singer has transformed into a one-name pop icon and multimedia brand - the kind you read about in supermarket tabloids, fashion bibles and rock magazines alike. With every door in the music industry open to her as she plotted her solo debut, Love Angel Music Baby, Stefani went shopping for producer (Dr. Dre, Andre 3000, and Linda Perry among them) and emerged with a truly eclectic homage to the ’80s pop disco of her adolescence. With a potential motherhood and a film career ahead, this may be the last time the 35-year-old will be able to stay in the groove for very long, and she’’s determined to dance for inspiration. 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 »

Bombshell

After 17 years in music, Gwen Stefani has exploded onto the fashion scene as the It girl that everybody wants a peice of. So where did it all go right, asks Jane Bussman. Photographs by Warwick Saint. Styling by Andrea Lieberman.

Gwen Stefani arrives at the shoot dressed as the second half of her trademark contradiction: MGM starlet meets punk. She’s wearing her own label, Lamb - va-va voom sweater, jeans that look sewn on - with a bare face and wet hair. It’s hard to square this with the photographs that are reguarly splashed across the fashion press: she always looks too perfect to be real.

Stefani does a good line in perfection, which is why this is her moment. At 35, she has graduated from much-fancied face of punky ska band No Doubt to star of the American Vogue’s cover and the front rows of fashion week. She is bringing out a solo album and has landed a movie role - playing Jean Harlow opposite Jean Harlow in The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes. “I feel pretty lucky to be me,” she says. Read the rest of this article »

You ask, Gwen answers

What better way to give you the goss on Gwen Stefani than to let you ask her the questions yourselves?

If you’re making a solo album, does that mean No Doubt are breaking up? Vicky, NSW

“No! The music I wanted to make is something I couldn’t do with No Doubt. It would exclude members because it’s dance and electronics. But it’s cool, because the band has been so supportive, and there’s no plan to quit what we’re doing. I don’t want to call it a solo record, I call it a dance record. I wanted to make a modern version of the ’80s stuff I grew up on, music that you can dance to in a club.” Read the rest of this article »

Just A Girl

For the past 17 years, she has stood as the punky siren of the band No Doubt. But there is more to Gwen Stefani’s platinum-blonde life than meets the eye. There’s her fashion line, her acting career, and her first solo dance album with a little help from some music-industry heavies. Christopher Bollen meets the girl underneath it all.

When a certain then-unknown pop star landed for the first time in the New York and climbed into the back seat of a cab, she spoke those immortal words that have now become firmly cemented in rock-music legend: “Take me to the center of everything.” The driver dropped her off in Times Square. Whatever your feelings may be about this particular pop icon, the anecdote does offer a profound lesson: It is relatively easy to stand for a few seconds at the heart of the universe (in 1978, according to this cab driver, that would be the corner of 42nd and Broadway). The tough part is being able to stay there. Read the rest of this article »

The first lady of rock

A fashion label. A music career. A so-gorgeous husband. Welcome to Gwen Stefani’s world.

Picture this: You’re Gwen Stefani. You front No Doubt, one of the coolest rock bands in the world, and the guys in the group are so close they’re practically your family. You married Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale in a heavenly dipped-in-pink dress. You’ve launched a fashion label called LAMB that celebs are loving and you’re about to star in the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator. Can life get any better? Um, not really… Read the rest of this article »

The Greatest Show on Earth?

Well, No Doubt’s greatest hits, anyway - which is what they’ll be playing on their last tour before Gwen Stefani drops a solo CD. By Chris Willman.

Shooting what little breeze there is on a hot, insufferably still LA day, Gwen Stefani suddenly feels the need to cull a statistic from a bandmate. “How many times do you think you’ve thrown up in your life, Tony?” she asks. Tony Kanal looks like he’s not certain he wants to play this game. “I’m not sure it’s a lot,” the bass player answers with a nervous chuckle. Better to focus on the immediate future. “This time,” he insists, “it’s gonna be much more mellow and healthy.” Fifty points if you’ve already figured out our subject of the day: rock touring. Their little O.C.-teem-ska-band-that-could, No Doubt, is hitting the amphitheater circuit in June, pairing up with blink-182 for one of the summer’s most anticipated tours. (One of the most economical too: Ticket prices top out in the mid-two-figure range, or about $250 cheaper than it’d cost you for a similar seat to see Madonna.) It’s a nationwide victory lap in honor of their recent blockbuster hits collection, The Singles 1992-2003, whose new song, a cover of Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life,” afforded them yet another top 10 smash (their tenth). This could be the optimal point in their history to catch the band: They’ve been together long enough to almost count as seasoned elder statesmen - 17 years, which is about 170 in rock years - but, being still in their 30s, they’re vigorous, scrappy, and in no danger yet of outgrowing their audience. Read the rest of this article »