2008 Woodie Awards
Gwen Stefani Goes Solo, but No Doubt Will Rock On
Ben Wener
Issue date: 12/1/04 Section: Entertainment
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She insists it isn't really a solo album. Merely "a collaborative side project," a lark that snowballed into something more.
And no way is No Doubt over.
Yet that lark- "Love, Angel, Music, Baby," the first album issued under Gwen Stefani's name- comes with trepidation about the future. Intentionally or not, it just might set her on a new career path, one that wouldn't include the band of brothers she has considered family since she was a feisty teenager from Anaheim, Calif.
"We were pretty much married to each other for 17 years," Stefani, 35, says of her bandmates. "But when we literally started getting married to other people, we grew up."
This, then, is the second pivotal point in Stefani's professional life. The first came nearly a decade ago, when "Tragic Kingdom," her second album with No Doubt, rocketed to multiplatinum status, making the ska-pop outfit a global phenomenon.
Three Grammys and 30 million worldwide sales later, Stefani has become as iconic for who she is as for the music she makes. But, she says, it's time the band took a break.
"It's healthy for us to take time for ourselves," she says. "We've had our cake and eaten it so many times, we can't believe it. So it feels like a chapter has been finished."
And a new one has begun.
Released Tuesday, "Love, Angel, Music, Baby" places Stefani in league with Madonna and Britney Spears and tries to appeal to fans of R&B and hip-hop, a base beyond No Doubt's usual audience. It is certain to bring her greater glory- though Stefani stresses she has no intention of quitting her day job as a vibrant yet vulnerable rocker.
Still, it's impossible now for her to be only that.
In the busy years since the 1995 release of "Tragic Kingdom," Stefani has remodeled herself into an A-list presence whose style impacts the whole of popular culture - and whose personal life has become salacious gossip-column fodder.
Always clad in Galliano, Vivienne Westwood or L.A.M.B., she's become a red-carpet regular - the platinum blonde with shades of Jean Harlow (whom she portrays in Martin Scorsese's upcoming Howard Hughes biopic "The Aviator") that scores of hounding paparazzi want to shoot.
And no way is No Doubt over.
Yet that lark- "Love, Angel, Music, Baby," the first album issued under Gwen Stefani's name- comes with trepidation about the future. Intentionally or not, it just might set her on a new career path, one that wouldn't include the band of brothers she has considered family since she was a feisty teenager from Anaheim, Calif.
"We were pretty much married to each other for 17 years," Stefani, 35, says of her bandmates. "But when we literally started getting married to other people, we grew up."
This, then, is the second pivotal point in Stefani's professional life. The first came nearly a decade ago, when "Tragic Kingdom," her second album with No Doubt, rocketed to multiplatinum status, making the ska-pop outfit a global phenomenon.
Three Grammys and 30 million worldwide sales later, Stefani has become as iconic for who she is as for the music she makes. But, she says, it's time the band took a break.
"It's healthy for us to take time for ourselves," she says. "We've had our cake and eaten it so many times, we can't believe it. So it feels like a chapter has been finished."
And a new one has begun.
Released Tuesday, "Love, Angel, Music, Baby" places Stefani in league with Madonna and Britney Spears and tries to appeal to fans of R&B and hip-hop, a base beyond No Doubt's usual audience. It is certain to bring her greater glory- though Stefani stresses she has no intention of quitting her day job as a vibrant yet vulnerable rocker.
Still, it's impossible now for her to be only that.
In the busy years since the 1995 release of "Tragic Kingdom," Stefani has remodeled herself into an A-list presence whose style impacts the whole of popular culture - and whose personal life has become salacious gossip-column fodder.
Always clad in Galliano, Vivienne Westwood or L.A.M.B., she's become a red-carpet regular - the platinum blonde with shades of Jean Harlow (whom she portrays in Martin Scorsese's upcoming Howard Hughes biopic "The Aviator") that scores of hounding paparazzi want to shoot.