Gwen Stefani admits that her creativity was "unhinged" around the time of her 2004 solo debut, Love. Angel. Music Baby.
Around the 20th anniversary of Stefani's first LP without No Doubt, this week, the singer and The Voice co-judge spoke to People about the album's legacy. On Friday (Nov. 15), Stefani will release her fifth studio album, Bouquet.
"At that point, things were unhinged, meaning that I had zero restrictions: I wasn't in the band. I didn't have children. I wasn't married," Stefani, 55, told the outlet. "I was like, 'I'm making a guilty-pleasure dance record.'"
While the singer has been married to her second husband, singer and former The Voice coach Blake Shelton, since 2021, Stefani was previously married to English musician Gavin Rossdale from 2002 to 2015.
On the 2004 album, Stefani added, "I had such an unbelievably clear vision of what I wanted to do."
"I had made a style Bible. This is before we had internet the way we do now, but I had torn every magazine, everything from makeup images, to hair, to clothes, to musical references. Everything was collected," she continued.
Harajuku culture was a major, and controversial, part of L.A.M.B., with Stefani including four Japanese and Japanese-American women as her backup dancers in the mid-2000s. But the album also featured hit singles including "Cool," the Eve-assisted "Rich Girl," "What You Waiting For?" "Luxurious" and The Neptunes-produced "Hollaback Girl."
"I knew what kind of song I was going to write. I had been so put down that I was like, 'I’m just going to show them what I got,'" Stefani said about writing "Hollaback Girl."
"It was that attitude when I went in the studio, and I was like, 'OK, this is the cheerleader I always wanted to be, and I want it to sound like a marching band,'" she continued. Then he goes, 'I’m going to go eat. I’ll be back. Finish up.' Then we did the 'bananas' part, and we knew after we wrote it — we just made a cultural collision. We were jumping up on the couch, and we got the champagne."
L.A.M.B. debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, selling 309,000 copies first-week, and has since gone on to be certified five times platinum.
