Boston Globe (April 5th 1996)
No Doubt about it, ska-pop ‘Just A Girl’ works for this band
No doubt, you know the hit song and you know the hip video, which was shot partly in a men's room and partly in a women's room. Boys play instruments in one; girl sings alone in the other. Eventually, they all come together. The girl, she's this kickin' blonde sporting a bare midriff, singing, sweetly, "I'm just a girl, little ol' me/Don't let me out of your sights/I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don't let me have any rights."
There's a ska bounce, a pop kick, a punk surge and a very-in-your-face charge. Madness meets Blondie. The voice and lyrics belong to Gwen Stefani and No Doubt is the eight-year-old Orange County quartet that plays Mama Kin Tuesday night, a rare club date during a brief break on an arena tour with Bush.
The song, "Just a Girl," which they performed on "The Late Show with David Letterman" this week, has opened up many a door for the band. They would like to explain to the folks that have just picked up on them that they are no one-hit wonders, no MTV creation, no ball of fluff. "For us, we're doing the same thing we've always done," says bassist Tony Kanal, "but I would assume that's a common misconception," the made-by-MTV snipe. "Nothing could be further from the truth. We made a video that captured that live energy and our stage show."
"It's fun," adds singer Stefani. "After being called an underground loser band forever, to have a {hit} single and play in places we've never been to and have people really go off. It's really kind of neat."
No Doubt is novel in at least one way. Stefani's older brother, Eric, founded the band, wrote songs and played keyboards. He left to pursue a career in animation, and Gwen stepped into the main lyricist role, shifting the perspective of the group. "In the early days, my brother wrote most of the music and I was the one sitting on the couch watching `The Brady Bunch,' " says Gwen, "and he's telling me to `Sing! Sing!' In the last three or four years, I started writing my own lyrics and songs, and it made this album, `Tragic Kingdom,' special because it's real. I was singing his songs about getting his wisdom teeth pulled or something and I haven't had my wisdom teeth pulled."
You hear "Just a Girl" and you might wonder exactly where Stefani is coming from. Perhaps, she wishes she'd be born a member of the other gender? Nope. "I'm a real girly girl and I wouldn't change it for anything," she says. "I love to put on makeup and do all these things associated with being a girl. `Just A Girl' was a snapshot I had of some of the burdens of being a girl that a lot of guys don't think about -- like having to be escorted to the bathroom, or not being able to walk by yourself somewhere at night."
The girls understand. "In the old days, it was a lot of guys who'd come to our shows," Stefani says. "The girls would be like, `What are you doing up there?' -- a jealousy thing. Now, girls come and totally go off and relate. And it's not so rare to see a girl up there {onstage}. In my scene, in Orange County, it was lots of {male} punk bands. I always thought we could never be cool enough or tough enough or hard enough, because of me being a girl. But we could always mix it up a lot more -- I love to do all different kinds of stuff, ballads and punk songs. Our show is so physical. The music is raw, broken down to the bare bones"