In 2004, No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani ventured out on her own, emerging with a one-of-a-kind success that still reverberates throughout modern pop.
Interscope • 2004
“I know one thing,” Gwen Stefani said of her debut record, “you can try not to like [it], you can try real hard; but it will at least be your guilty pleasure.” This is obviously understating the album’s potential - by the end of its commercial run, Stefani had racked up six Grammy nominations, and to date, the album has sold over eight million copies worldwide. But Stefani was onto something when she labeled Love. Angel. Music. Baby. a guilty pleasure. It’s grown into something of a cult classic in the twenty years since its release, even as one of the best-selling records of all time. But it’s garnered its fair share of criticism; Stefani’s co-opting of Japanese culture, her use of the album to advertise her clothing line, and a perceived lack of concrete identity have made it a controversial monument of early aughts pop. Even so, it’s impossible to deny that there’s something there; Stefani is a born star, evident from her breakthrough as the frontwoman of No Doubt, and she makes damn catchy pop songs. Even the album’s most intense detractors certainly knew this shit was bananas.
Stefani’s transition from ska punk upstart to full-blown superstar started with No Doubt’s breakthrough success, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom. On the album’s lead single, “Just a Girl,” her voice tore through a sea of post-grunge testosterone: “I’m just a girl in the world,” she sang, “that’s all you’ll ever let me be.” The album would spawn six more singles, including their biggest song, and the one with the most staying power; “Don’t Speak” has become a quintessential nineties ballad, and it would be nothing without Stefani’s brilliant, nuanced performance. Following the massive commercial flop of follow-up record Return of Saturn, the band came back in 2001 reenergized. Rock Steady spawned three wildly successful singles, including their only Billboard Top 10 singles, “Hey Baby” and “Underneath It All.” “Hey Baby,” in particular, suggested a new direction for No Doubt, one that traded into ska for elements of dancehall and hip hop. Its ubiquity at the time made one more thing very evident: Gwen Stefani was primed for a solo breakthrough.
Going into the recording sessions for her debut solo record, Stefani has recalled several instances of being so intimidated by the process that she burst into tears. Linda Perry, who co-wrote the album’s first single, “What You Waiting For?,” once told her to leave the studio. But her anxiety resulted in one of the most meta lead singles of all time; “What You Waiting For?” is a single about writing a single, a surging synth-pop banger that turns self-doubt into empowerment. “Take a chance, you stupid hoe,” she scolds herself, “…life is short, you’re capable.” The song only reached number forty-seven on the Hot 100, but it ushered in a new era for the pop star, one that lived up to her full potential. The follow-up single, “Rich Girl,” was a reworking of Louchie Lou and Michie One’s 1993 song of the same name, which, in turn, made use of the chorus from Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I Were a Rich Man.” She created the song with the assistance of hip hop mega-producer, Dr. Dre, who had previously worked with Stefani on 2001’s Eve collaboration “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” They brought Eve into the process again, hoping to duplicate their previous song’s success, and they succeeded; “Rich Girl” peaked at number seven on the Hot 100 and charted at number one in several countries worldwide.
But it’s the album’s third single that defines Stefani’s solo career to this day; “Hollaback Girl” was an inescapable smash and her first number one single in the US. She teamed up with The Neptunes, the legendary production duo that features Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, in an attempt to create a “silly dance record.” Silly it certainly is; the song was written as a response to remarks from Courtney Love about Stefani’s image as a “cheerleader.” She clearly took the remarks to heart, embracing the cheerleader image to the degree of absolute absurdity. To date, “Hollaback Girl” sounds like nothing else that’s ever graced the Hot 100, even if its influences once did too - it’s an unholy brew of Toni Basil’s “Mickey,” Clipse’s “Grindin’,” and Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” peppered with essences of Madonna and the Waitresses. The song has several lyrics that became cultural moments: “B-A-N-A-N-A-S,” “ooh, this my shit,” “I ain’t no hollaback girl.” It inspired as much vitriol as it did acclaim, being labeled as “moronic and tuneless,” and her cheerleader guise being criticized as “delusional” for a thirty-five year old woman. But its place in pop culture is impossible to deny, criticism - often misogynistic - aside.
None of the album’s following singles made as big a cultural impact. The gorgeous, Cyndi Lauper-esque slow jam “Cool” peaked at number thirteen, while “Luxurious” and “Crash” lagged behind at twenty-one and forty-nine, respectively. But its songs weren’t all that L.A.M.B. had going for it; over the course of her time in the spotlight, Stefani had grown into a fashion icon, her appearance transforming with each step in her career in new, era-defining ways. This time, she drew heavily from her visits to Japan, folding the country’s then hip hop-influenced style to her own clothing line, which she named L.A.M.B., an acronym of the album’s title. She also brought back with her a quartet of backup dancers she would refer to as the Harajuku Girls - they appeared with her in promotional cycles and almost every music video from this era in her career, and she dedicated a song to them on the album (the record’s mind-numbing low point, “Harajuku Girls.”) She’s garnered criticism over the years for her use of the dancers, the decision labeled as an act of cultural appropriation. Comedian Margaret Cho called the Harajuku Girls “a minstrel show,” even as she acknowledged that there were “not that many Asian people out there in the media.” Stefani has defended herself in the years since, opining that her co-opting of Japanese culture was an act of cultural exchange and was born from legitimate respect and admiration. Either way, the Harajuku Girls era has proven a divisive element from this period in her career, and its impact is attached directly to Love. Angel. Music. Baby.’s style and impact.
The album drew its musical aesthetic from new wave eighties pop, an artistic choice that has inspired countless modern pop artists to do the same. The influence is clearest on album cuts like “The Real Thing,” which recruited members of New Order to make what is essentially a New Order song. But Gwen brings her own essence to these songs, bridging the gap between decades of sound and style with effortless panache. “Crash” and “Serious” draw from early electropop and the New Jack swing of Janet Jackson’s Control era, respectively, and the André 3000-produced “Bubble Pop Electric” is an ecstatic, pulsating synth-pop cut that showcases an undeniable chemistry between the two. 3000 appears again on the Prince-indebted album closer “Long Way to Go,” which is an ill-fitting take on interracial relationships that would’ve made more sense on OutKast’s Speakerboxxx / The Love Below. A major critique of the album at the time of its release was its wealth of collaborators, but Stefani puts the pieces together in engaging ways, and the album never runs out of steam.
Stefani has’t made an album as cohesive or thematically consistent since; 2006’s The Sweet Escape was a messy, if creative, follow-up that saw her experimenting with genres like hip hop and reggaeton, and it spawned one of her most successful singles, the Akon collaboration “The Sweet Escape.” But her next studio effort, This is What the Truth Feels Like, wouldn’t arrive until 2016, and its embrace of the current pop landscape felt tentative. She hasn’t released an album since, even though she’s released scattered singles of varying quality, and has spent much of her time as a coach on NBC’s The Voice.
In a lot of ways, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. was a one-of-a-kind event, the kind of pop record that comes around maybe once a decade (its closest analogue might be Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2015 masterpiece, E•MO•TION). But its influence is palpable, even today; see the work of Charli XCX, whose 2022 album Crash sounds like a descendant of L.A.M.B. in its full-force embrace of eighties sheen. But there’s only one Gwen, and her debut stands as one of the boldest transformations in contemporary pop.