Gwen: Interviews
Gwen did several online and radio interviews to promote Let Me Reintroduce Myself.
Gwen Stefani Returns to Ska Roots on New Song ‘Let Me Reintroduce Myself’
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Gwen Stefani returns to her ska reggae roots on her new single “Let Me Reintroduce Myself,” the singer’s first non-Christmas, non-duet track in over four years. Stefani will perform the song live for the first time tonight, December 7th, on The Voice
“Let Me Reintroduce Myself” finds Stefani reconnecting with Jamaican music — a foundational inspiration throughout No Doubt’s catalog and Stefani’s solo material — as well her own legacy. The bouncy track opens with fuzzy radio tuning pulled from the beginning of No Doubt’s “Underneath It All,” while it also boasts a direct nod to her hit “Hollaback Girl” with the lyric, “I already gave you bananas.”
“This song is a way of saying I’m back with new music. It’s a fun, lighthearted song, because I got inspired and hopefully to bring a little bit of joy,” Stefani said in a statement. “The idea was to write a song that had a bit of a nostalgic feeling to it, so I think musically it reminds you of back in the day, going back to where I started musically which was with ska and reggae. I’m still the same me but here’s something a little bit new in case you feel like hearing a little bit more of me.”
Gwen Stefani on Her 'Full-Circle' Return to Ska & Blake Shelton's Feedback
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Gwen Stefani wasn’t planning on releasing any more new music in 2020. “I fantasized about it,” the pop singer-songwriter tells Billboard. “But then I couldn’t really wrap my head around what kind of music I would create at this point in my life.”
Earlier this year, Stefani had released a pair of duets with fiancé Blake Shelton, “Nobody But You” and “Happy Anywhere”; guested on a Mark Ronson remix of Dua Lipa’s “Physical” for Dua's Club Future Nostalgia remix album; and released the original holiday track “Here This Christmas” for the reissue of her 2017 album, You Make It Feel Like Christmas. Still, a new season of The Voice was coming up, and none of those songs were exactly what Stefani wanted to perform on the NBC reality competition.
“Just coming off of doing two singles with Blake in country-land -- that was unexpected and super fun, and put me into another genre that I wasn’t expecting to bounce into, and motivated me,” she explains. “I knew I was going to be on The Voice this season, and I wanted to try and write some new music, and this is one of the things that was born out of that.”
The result is “Let Me Reintroduce Myself,” a new single released on Monday (Dec. 7) that represents Stefani’s return to the mash-up of pop, ska and reggae that defined her ‘90s breakthrough as the leader of No Doubt. After hopscotching through genres since the release of her 2016 pop album This Is What The Truth Feels Like, Stefani describes the process of revisiting the sound that made her famous as a “full-circle epiphany,” with “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” intended to preview a project due out next year.
“I just had this lightbulb moment,” says Stefani. “I was like, ‘I really want to investigate where I started in music -- the reggae and ska, when I first fell in love with music, when it defined who I was. I really want to do happy music, that’s where it all started.’ Once I got into that mode, it was like a wildfire, because every person I went in with, we were just so inspired and excited to be doing that kind of music.”
When Stefani says that she wanted to “investigate” reggae and ska, she means full-on research about the origins of ska and reggae music -- something she admits that she and her No Doubt band mates didn’t do enough of during their early days. “When No Doubt started, we were an imitation generation, imitating the 1970s,” she explains. “When we were kids, we were trying to say, ‘We’re ska!,’ which was already a third wave.” So Stefani did a deep dive into where it all began, from its development in Jamaica in the early 1960s as the island celebrated its freedom from the United Kingdom. Stefani discovered individual stories -- she fixated on Sister Mary Ignatius Davies, a nun based in Kingston who helped inspire several musical prodigies at the Alpha Boys School in the 1960s -- and also considered the relation between that moment in history and the present day.
“I think it was because the [protests] were happening, and there was so much stuff going on with racism, and I just kept thinking, I can’t believe this is still happening,” she says. “Basically, this little Catholic nun was the one that kind of nurtured reggae music. And I’m thinking, I’m this little Catholic girl from Anaheim that does reggae. That makes no sense! Even though I have no business doing that music, in a way, it’s so real and right and true and honest and pure. It was like, this is who I am, and you can try to judge me for it, but then go to the eighth-grade me and try to bully me about it, because that’s who I was when I was in eighth grade.”
Stefani had been working on new music in early 2020 prior to recording "Let Me Reintroduce Myself," teaming up with producer Luke Niccoli for a handful of tracks before lockdown. Once the pandemic hit the U.S., she and Shelton decamped to Oklahoma, where she remained for three months with extended family: “We were doing homeschool there,” she says, “and I was cooking, cleaning. We had like three meals a day for like 14 people.” Still, Niccoli had helped Stefani get on a creative roll, and once he introduced the pop star to producer Ross Golan, the three spent hours knocking out multiple songs over Zoom, including "Let Me Reintroduce Myself."
“Ross is really good at getting in your head and investigating, and he has the right tone for me right now,” says Stefani. “I always feel like my songs have a bit of a kitschy, fun, silly side to them lyrically, even if I’m talking about something serious, and he’s really good at that as well. “
Shelton, whom Stefani announced her engagement to in October, was also providing feedback on her in-the-works material, and eventually helped her choose “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” as the opening salvo of her next era. “It’s funny, because Blake was the one who was listening to all of the songs,” she says. “He would sort of figure out what the single could be. We were trying to decide, if we did put something out, what would it be? And he goes, '["Let Me Reintroduce Myself"] just keeps making me feel like it should be that song.’ Blake’s been on The Voice for like 19 seasons, picking songs for people -- and sort of has 27 No. 1 radio hits -- so he’s really good at picking songs, I really trust him.”
Stefani will perform “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” for the first time on Monday (Dec. 7) night’s episode of The Voice. Although she doesn’t have a concrete timetable of a new solo album, she says that she probably has “like 19 or 20 songs now, but I still want to go back in and write some more once we get through Christmas.” One of those finished songs is titled “Sister Mary Ignatius Davies,” dedicated to the unwitting musical pioneer; whether her follow-up to This Is What The Truth Feels Like finds Stefani tumbling further down the reggae-ska rabbit hole is anyone’s guess, but she’s proud of “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” in the meantime.
“I like when I do [this music], people like when I do it, and I want to make something that people like,” she says. “I’m gonna put this out, see how it feels, and then I’ll see what comes next.”
Gwen Stefani on her new single, returning to her reggae and ska roots, and the legacy of Tragic Kingdom
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Gwen Stefani had begun working on new music before the lockdown hit, but says it was only when she brought up the idea of reintroducing herself to her collaborators that inspiration struck. “I'm not trying to force myself on anyone, and I'm not trying to have a comeback,” she says with a laugh. “I’m simply going to do some music without feeling defensive about it. Whoever likes me can listen. If you don't like it, you can actually say you don't like it! I don't care. I just want to put music out.”
After cutting a song in February with rising songwriter and producer Luke Niccoli (who’s worked with buzzy acts like Yves Tumor, Miya Folick, and Joji), Stefani was virtually introduced to pop hitmaker Ross Golan (Selena Gomez, The Chicks, P!nk), who suggested the trio write about exactly what the singer was feeling: a desire to remind people that she’s not just records collecting dust on your shelf.
“Let Me Reintroduce Myself,” released Monday, is a feel-good return to the ska/pop/reggae hybrid — record-scratching, horns, a walking bass line — that Stefani perfected during her time fronting No Doubt. Using her downtime in Oklahoma during the pandemic to dig back into ska’s roots, she immersed herself in the history of the genre, leading her to feel like now was the right moment to return to the sounds that first put her on the map 30 years ago. “All of the riots had happened, and I just started thinking so much about when I started loving music and why,” she says. “It was eighth grade when I learned about ska and Madness and the Selecter and all those bands that started to define the kind of music that I felt like I fit into; here I was, this Catholic girl from Anaheim doing reggae music! But that music was all about unity and anti-racism, and that was in the '70s. Then we were doing it in the '90s. And now here we are, again, in the same old mess.”
After the “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” writing session in late August (for which she later cut her vocals safely at the Los Angeles studio, the Village), Stefani began referring to Golan and Niccoli as her “song soulmates,” joining forces on a handful of other Zoom-born songs since then that will, if all goes according to plan, see the light of day some time in 2021. But for now, the No Doubt singer’s new track is a welcome return to form after five seasons judging The Voice, twice topping the country charts with fiance Blake Shelton, and building upon the success of her first-ever Christmas album, 2017’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas. “I just said, "I want to do some reggae,’” she remembers. “And it was just this weird full circle moment, because as soon as I started telling whoever I was going into the studio about that, they were so inspired too.”
In a call late last week, Stefani walked EW through returning to solo music, revisiting her back catalogue on the heels of Tragic Kingdom’s 25th anniversary, and how some of her biggest hits have gained new resonance in recent years.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How are you feeling knowing this song is about to come out?
GWEN STEFANI: Under the circumstances, to be able to put out new music is just beyond a gift. Even if it wasn't a pandemic it would be exciting, but it's crazy with the pandemic, you know what I'm saying? I just didn't think it was going to come this year or that I'd be this lucky.
What was your headspace like as you went into writing and recording new solo material this year?
Well, this is the deal: I haven't really put a record out in five years. That's a long time. I don't know how it went by so quickly. I would have loved to, but I was doing the Vegas show [Just a Girl] and that took up a lot of time. Before that, I toured the record before, [2016’s This Is What the Truth Feels Like], and the next thing you know, five years passed. I also was feeling like... "Does anyone really want to hear new music from me?" It's so much work to make new music, and I think about all the bands that I loved — I don't go looking for their new records. I just listen to the stuff that I liked in high school .
Somebody sent me a song called “When Loving Gets Old,” and I really loved it. Nobody sends me songs. Why doesn't anyone just send me, like, “Umbrella”? I got this song, I actually liked it. I went in to record it. The girl that sent it to me said, "They actually wrote this for you." And I was like, "Really? No wonder the lyrics feel so good. Why don't I write with them?” We wrote this song called “Cry Happy,” made up of all of these lyrics I’d written on my phone. We had this really great day, but I had to rush home to the kids. It's so different these days; you get there and you have to get home to cook dinner, so I didn't get to cut a demo. That was last February. And then we hit lockdown.
I spent a hundred days in Oklahoma, doing laundry and cooking. We had 15 people there. It was an incredible pause on life to be there at the ranch with the boys and just have this surreal lifestyle for a while, but nothing to do with the life included creating music or anything like that. But Blake happens to have a studio there and had to do some work and brought an engineer in. So I recorded the vocals on “Cry Happy,” and that was like lighting a match to a wildfire because I was like, “My god, I’ve got to do music."
You felt inspiration again?
I felt all kinds of inspirations and ideas. It's like God saying, "You’ve got to do this now." When I get that urgency, you can't stop me. I'm like, “I’ve got to go write songs. That's what I need right now. And I don't even care if anyone hears them, or if they think they suck, I'm doing it, now.”
When I got back to L.A., I went into the studio. Everything was plastic-guarded. You get your temperature taken. Everybody's wearing masks. By then, all of the riots had happened. I started to go back and investigate ska and reggae, and I found all these documentaries about how ska was born in the 1960s, how that was linked to the Jubilee when Jamaica was being freed from England. Starting No Doubt, we were the third-wave imitating the 1960s.Then I found this documentary on a school in Jamaica called the Alpha Boys School, which was run by Catholic nuns. There's this little white Catholic nun called Sister Mary Ignatius Davies who helped nurture reggae music. You can see all these pictures of her with these little boys and they're learning these brass instruments. The first ska band that was ever born was these kids out of Alpha Boys School, the Skatalites. No Doubt used to listen to them. Doing my research, it all just felt so full-circle.
So this music was born out of that. I wanted to go back and make something that was joyful and back to my roots, where it all started. [Pre-pandemic] I’d been in the studio with Luke Niccoli and he's the one that said you really should work with my friend Ross, who turned out to be someone who really gets my sarcasm, and the fun side of my lyrics. We really hit it off.
With Luke, we taught each other a lot, especially when it came to ska and reggae, because I kept saying, "Dude, no, listen to Sublime. It has to have scratching in it. It has to be '90s." So he was discovering all this stuff that he didn't know, but bringing his technology and youth to the sound. It was a perfect kind of combination between the three of us. And we wrote a bunch of songs together and I know we're going to write more.
Lyrically, “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” addresses the idea of people thinking of you as a relic. Is that how you feel?
At the beginning of this process, I feel like I had to make excuses for why I wanted to make new music. I felt like people were going to judge me and be like, "Well, you're like super old. Why would you even want to?" This is just how my brain works. Anyone would, you know what I mean? Everybody has their own fears or insecurities.
Ross’s reaction was [for us to incorporate] a way of saying, “Well, I haven't really gone anywhere if you really think about it.” I just had a No. 1 hit on [country] radio ["Nobody But You"] — two of them actually, because the next one's ["Happy Anywhere"] going to go No. 1 soon [Editor’s note: it did, 24 hours after our call]. We were just trying to say I haven't really gone anywhere. I'm still doing the same thing. I still wear the same kind of stuff that I've always worn. It's just an evolution.
“Let Me Reintroduce Myself” references your past, lyrically and visually. Some artists are really loath to look backwards, but you seem extremely willing to. Why is that?
Five years ago, when my life blew up in my face, there was a lot of looking back. Music has always been a really amazing place to pour my heart and emotions into. It's like therapy.
When I was offered to do the Vegas show — a huge milestone for me — it was very reflective. I think it's an incredible thing to put out new music and have your sound evolve, whether it be through the No Doubt years or the three solo records I did. The first solo record [2004’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby.] was very much a dance record — that was the pop music when I was in high school that I wasn't into, but was the backdrop of my life. Back then, I said, "You know what? I want to try to make that kind of music. I want a dance song." It was so incredible to be able to work with all the talented people that I did and have such a different kind of sound like that, which made me want to do the second record, [2007’s The Sweet Escape].
The third solo record was not born in the same way. It didn't have a reference for the production. It was just, “How do I get through this time in my life? I've got to write these songs. I don't care how they're dressed up sonically. It's just getting them out.” During the process of doing that, I fall in love and I'm writing a song about my life basically being over and then starting to fall in love at the same time, all with one album.
After that, it was like, how do I evolve? When you do a new record, usually everything comes with that: the tour, the merch, the vibe. But when you're doing a Vegas show, you don't have a new song. You don't have anything new. How do you create a show around everything you've done? So there was a lot of looking back and thinking about, “How do I make this feel super nostalgic? How do I make this feel like, when everyone's coming from around the whole world to see me in this room, we have this common story, and that these songs were the backdrop to our lives?”
This year marked the 25th anniversary of No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom. How has that record changed meaning for you over the years?
I don't really like anniversaries. I don't really celebrate like, “Oh, I wore that in 1995. Now it's 10 years later, woo!” But then when it actually happened and I started seeing everyone posting and seeing all the stuff that we had done — things I don't remember, until I see the image — I was just overwhelmed, like, "Oh my god, we did that?" It was a really emotional couple of days. I really enjoyed hearing just how much that record impacted people. It really is truly mind-blowing to me that I get to do music, let alone to be part of people's lives in that way. It's hard to wrap my head around it.
I'm really proud of Tragic Kingdom. It was a very weird album. I was so naive. I didn't even know how to write a song. I don't know how I wrote those songs because I didn’t know anything back then. But doing the Vegas show was a really reflective time, because doing a song like “Just a Girl” every night felt more relevant than ever, especially in the last couple of years with the rise of the #MeToo movement. It feels like history repeating itself. We've come far, but we haven't. I always thought that I would outgrow that song and be a woman and not be able to sing the words “I'm just a girl” anymore, but it felt more relevant than it ever felt in my whole life. It was bizarre.