No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani has admitted that she had “absolutely no idea” that the band’s 1996 single Don’t Speak would become such a huge hit.
In an interview with the Guardian, in which she took questions from the paper’s readers, Stefani said of Don’t Speak”: “It didn’t even represent what we were doing, because No Doubt were such an uptempo, live-energy band. Even the guitar solo has no business being in that song.”
Prior to Don’t Speak - a power ballad with an unlikely classical guitar solo - No Doubt’s stock in trade had been ska-punk, but its success introduced them to a whole new audience and turned Stefani into a globally recognised star. As she admits, though, the song could have ended up sounding very different.
“The original version was written by my brother [Eric, keyboards], who lived at my grandparents’ house,” says Stefani. “After they passed away, it became the band house. He’d stay up all night eating peanut butter sandwiches, drinking milk and smoking cigarettes and go: ‘Oh, I wrote this last night.’
“Then I ended up rewriting the lyrics and changing the whole song because Tony [Kanal, No No Doubt’s bass player] broke up with me. It’s crazy, but that song really is the heartbeat of who I am and changed everything.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Stefani discusses Simple Kind Of Life, which she wrote for No Doubt’s 2000 album Return of Saturn.
“That song is a gift from God because I just received it,” she says. “I was just learning to play guitar, started strumming the chords and ran upstairs and said: ‘Guys, I think I just wrote a song!’ It’s the only song I’ve ever written on my own or on guitar, but I love it.”
Stefani also says that her new album, Bouquet, draws inspiration from yacht rock. “I really wanted to put these new songs in that kind of an atmosphere, to make it feel like there was no genre and there was no time. But there was no yacht!” she jokes.
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