NO DOUBT – "Don't Speak"

As with “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, “Don’t Speak” is a rarity: an American modern rock hit that managed to duck under Britpop’s Crimplene Curtain and chart here. In the US, it dominated airplay charts for months – no surprise No Doubt’s UK label sensed a hit in waiting. And like “Breakfast”, it’s one side of a break-up conversation – but where Deep Blue Something grasped at the thinnest of straws to keep something alive, Gwen Stefani knows it’s over, and seems just to want to dodge the final blow. There’s another parallel, too: “The Winner Takes It All”, also an intra-band break up record. That’s a magnificent song, but also pure theatre: a man’s fantasy of how his ex-wife might be feeling. “Don’t Speak” – written by the jilted member – goes to messier places.

No Doubt apparently tried a few arrangements for “Don’t Speak” – from the raw to the bouncy – before settling on this slightly skewed take on the power ballad, building its drama from the now-established quiet-loud dynamics of alt-rock. Bits of other ideas poke through – ominous movie theme chords on the “it’s all ending” middle eight ratchet up the tension; the Spanish guitar solo immediately dissipates it. It’s all filling in gaps in the song’s odd, potent structure – each twee sing-song verse gets cut off sooner and sooner before the chorus, the song shutting itself up repeatedly as the situation spirals downwards into pain.

The final verse – “I can see us dying / are we?” – is pure fake-out, jumping straight back into the chorus, but this time punching through it into the brutal coda that’s the best thing about “Don’t Speak”, Stefani keening the title and eventually fading into a grieving, desperate lullaby. In between, she turns the record on its head. “I know you’re good, I know you’re good, I know you’re real good”, she sings – angry for the first time in the song, snarling the word “good” with deserved contempt for every man who ever reasoned his way through a break-up, picking words not to spare his lover, but to sustain himself as the nice guy. She was never trying to silence him to keep him – that boat has sailed, and they both know it. She just wanted to still respect him afterwards.

Score: 7

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Tom

15 February 2014 00:03

Happy Valentine’s Day! In the real world, Gwen and her ex stayed friends, and according to Wikipedia “Cool” was written about their being friends. Aww.

To Mewing! (@tomewing)

15 February 2014 00:04

Sneaking a Popular entry on a classic break-up song just under the Valentine’s Day wire. http://t.co/vTAraZ1zJh

Dave

15 February 2014 00:19

Never occurred to me until just now how much of Ashlee Simpson is contained within that “I know you’re real good…” (of course she’d do far more with it than Stefani ever could, with No Doubt or solo, but that’s not really relevant since normally I don’t think of the two of them together).

lonepilgrim

15 February 2014 00:48

I like Gwen Stefani’s voice and she does a good job of barely reining in her sadness and frustration in the song. The band play with a similar balance of precision and passion that can be lacking in Rock and which may explain why it works so well as Pop. I’m not sure I’d want to listen to more by the group but I like some of Stefani’s solo stuff

Doctor Casino

15 February 2014 01:04

In the abstract, I admire this song for all the reasons given above – and running it through my head I like it quite a lot. Unfortunately, as a heavy American radio listener in those days, it’s just not conceivable for me to rate this at all – it feels endless after about the 150th listen, and this thing was just constantly on. Changing the station offered no refuge. The 7 seems right, but I have to be true to my teenage self and say 3, and also “god dammit, why won’t they play Spiderwebs instead?”

Mark M

15 February 2014 01:36

At the time, it made me think of raspy-ballad early Madonna – Crazy For You, Live To Tell. Seven is probably about right.

Chelovek na lune

15 February 2014 01:51

I love the rawness that breaks through into this song – both in the sung emotion and in some parts of the music. The tune is kind of cute too, with several hooks to which to cling. A kind of refreshing (and more or less timeless) breeze at the top of the charts. Just a pity that both No Doubt and Stefani’s output was very inconsistent in quality, with both gems and embarrassments to the fore. But this is among the best of them. 7 or 8.

Garry

15 February 2014 03:09

I loved it at the time. It was one of the few American mainstream rock songs I loved.

I hated songs by Goo Goo Dolls and their ilk – even middle-era Foo Fighters – because I couldn’t work out why you would want to smooth down electric guitars to the point of lifelessness. No Doubt here were different, the guitar a little bit raucous but not what the track is built around.

I think it was popular because it also tells a simple truth simply. This break-up hurts. There is no convoluted euphemisms, no fantasy situations which doesn’t exist in real life. It’s an achievable, realistic emotion (not that we want to wish this on anyone). Listeners could connect to what the songs said.

Most my favourite songs about relationships/love/sex have such simple messages. Teenage Kicks to me is the lust of a emotional-developing teen. XTC’s Ten Feet Tall describes nothing but those giddy feelings in the early weeks of a relationship. These aren’t songs about unattainable situations. Don’t Speak is the same, though at the other end of the relationship.

swanstep

15 February 2014 04:32

The headline for 1996 had kind of been ‘the Alternative Nation finds its Debbie Harry’. No one ridiculously good-looking (except perhaps for Buckley) had emerged from the whole post-Nirvana period, and then suddenly there was Gwen – lots of alt. skater grrl signifiers but also a stone cold babe, more glamorous than most movie stars. Ultra-dramatic ‘Don’t Speak’ with its vid showing Gwen at her prettiest in her blonde flip hairdo and blue polka dot dress and the band grumpily grappling with what this might mean for them was the apotheosis of this awakening. Anyhow, I think a lot of people were picking Gwen to leave the band at this point, and it was a pleasant surprise when she revealed herself to be like Debbie Harry in another way – committed to the music, to being in a band, generally loyal, etc..

‘Don’t Speak”s title didn’t quite work for me at the time because the phrase had been a central (give Diane Wiest another Oscar please) gag in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, e.g., here, but with repetition the song and its vid. wore me down. Universal in theme (as Garry, 8 emphasizes), DS was a richly deserved hit all over the world (and listening to it now through headphones there’s a boatload of stuff going on in it that I’d never noticed before, e.g., the muted horn to bring us back from the guitar solo – nice):
8

Billy Hicks

15 February 2014 04:42

For some reason I associate this song with a huge oh-baby-baby-bunny from two years later, indicating that this was still a big radio hit well into 1999.

I never saw this as a rock song possibly because the guitar is so buried into the background, just another excellent pop track – 7 or maybe 8 if I’m particularly feeling it, the beginning and the “Hush hush darling” extended jam at the end my fave bits. And I’m not ashamed to admit that a bit later on, in the Love Angel Music Baby era, I had a slight teenage crush on Gwen Stefani – seems odd to think that this is her only appearance on Popular, although she came close with some #2s and top 5 appearances.

mapman132

15 February 2014 05:10

In US chart performance this was the “Killing Me Softly” of 1997: lots and lots of airplay, no commercially released single, therefore no Hot 100 appearance, but fueled a #1 album that sold a boatload of copies. Gwen would eventually have a Hot 100 #1 in her own right with “Hollaback Girl”.

Oddly I don’t have much to say about the song itself. It got played so much, and still does to some extent, that it seems a bit cliche. But ignoring the overexposure and just judging on its own merits I’ll give it 6/10.

DanH

15 February 2014 07:27

Yes….I was blissfully unaware of most music in early 1997 (self-contained Beatles bubble), but couldn’t escape this one. As Mapman said, due to Billboard rules, it couldn’t chart in the Hot 100, and the charts look downright wrong without it. Not surprised at all that it made it big in the U.K. Song itself is allright, I just wore out of it after all these years.

@5: Oh man I don’t know if I ever heard “Spiderwebs” since 1996, but I do recall hearing that a lot that year.

MikeMCSG

15 February 2014 09:27

A long overdue chance to be positive. With the partial exception of “Three Lions” which palled through over-exposure this was the first number one since “Sleeping Satellite” that I was really keen on. It was all the more surprising coming from a band who’d hitherto shown little promise; I think it was someone in Q compared them to The Selecter.

Another Pete

15 February 2014 12:06

I remember the UK media making something out of the fact that though an American band, they had British connections like Garbage. Though compared to Shirley Manson the fact the bassist Tony Kanal was born and spent his early childhood in London and that Gwen Stefani was dating Gavin Rossdale of Bush they were seemingly clutching at straws at trying to squeeze them into the Britpop bracket.

Izzy

15 February 2014 12:54

This is up with Baby D for best no.1 of the 90s. It’s perfect in every way – great tune, engaging story and backstory, neat production choices (check out the size of that snare!) and that gorgeous coda which still gives me shivers. A clear (10).

thefatgit

15 February 2014 13:10

The simple intro evokes “Breakfast In America”, and then Gwen comes in sounding almost like Madonna. That’s when I knew “Don’t Speak” was something special. There’s nothing here that doesn’t fit; the spikes of punky guitar, the horn into Spanish guitar, the bass and drums further down in the mix, unlike Blondie with Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison providing the punchy rhythms that Debbie Harry soared over. Gwen Stefani is given space for her voice to flourish. As the song builds, the emotion builds but stops short of turning into an alt-power ballad. It’s a balance that appeals to this pair of ears, which is why “Spiderwebs” doesn’t work as well for me, because Gwen is battling against all that punky sludge.

I feel sorry for the US commenters here, because it seems this song has suffered from over-exposure. I got an inkling at the time (the video was on heavy repeat on MTV), but it didn’t matter. This was beautiful. Gwen was captivating. I wanted more, so I bought “Tragic Kingdom”, but stopped short of going in two-footed into Ska-Punk. “Just A Girl” is probably more indicative of what No Doubt were about as a band, but “Don’t Speak” is definitely a highlight from 1997. Easily a 9.

Kat but logged out innit

15 February 2014 13:36

I couldn’t bear this for many reasons: a) Gwen’s nasal voice, b) the song was too slow c) it went on for ages d) they repeated the same TOTP performance with her foliage-covered mic stand for MONTHS even when it stopped being #1 e) the chords were too difficult for me to play on the guitar f) my metaller mates liked it and I couldn’t understand why and I desperately wanted to impress them, but was too stubborn to admit that they knew more about music than I did.

But then I heard “Just A Girl” (thanks to said mates, of course) and it all made sense. And so did “Sixteen” and “Spiderwebs” and “Sunday Morning” and “Different People” and most of that album (“The Climb” is kind of awful vocally and musically but I LOVED it at the time). The lyrics on most of Tragic Kingdom feel pretty clunky now, but I have to admit that at the time You’re only sixteen with a lot to say / but they won’t give you the time of day felt like it was written for me.

I never managed to click with “Don’t Speak” though! Something about the multi-track vocals just really grate on me. And it’s still too long.

leveret

15 February 2014 13:56

For some reason, this has always sounded like a (distant?) cousin of Coming Around Again by Carly Simon to me, although having just played them back to back they’re not particularly alike! The gentle ska inflection works well here though – it’s difficult to introduce ska elements without sounding too jolly for a break-up song but this manages fine. (8)

Baztech.

15 February 2014 15:03

Ahhhh Gwen, this song has some good points, maybe slightly too melodramatic for me, I’ll give it a 6.

But it was at school that some of her hits laid an impression on me. “What You Waiting For?” has remained one of my favourite pop songs ever, it was just the catchiest thing ever – almost too much for a 16 year old boy to handle. Pure nostalgias effects of course.

Never really had a crush on her though…

flahr

15 February 2014 15:49

Rock on! I hadn’t actually noticed this was a break-up song before, even though it obviously is, so, er, whoops. Anyway, it would be a great [8] even without the guy in the Madness t-shirt and the whoppingly incongruous Spanish guitar break (as permanently inexplicable as the sax solo in “Walk Into The Sun” by The March Violets).

Alfred

15 February 2014 16:38

The blanket U.S. airplay for “Don’t Speak,” Tracy Chapman’s “Gimme One Reason,” and the last couple of Jagged Little Pill singles felt like a rebuke. Boring the song into my medulla didn’t warm me to Stefani’s squeaky pipes. With the exception of a couple of solo hits, Stefani is one of the most inexplicable pop stars of the last twenty years.

Ido Alon (@alonido)

15 February 2014 16:50

“I know you’re real real good”

http://t.co/9hhoiVqOzZ

Kinitawowi

15 February 2014 18:36

#13 and #14: the main trivia most British types know about No Doubt is that they started out as a Madness cover band – as I understand it, Don’t Speak is quite a way into their lifetime. Their Madness connections mean that they probably also act as the breakout of that curiously American concept of Third Wave Ska (see also the Mighty Mighty Bosstones et al).

I dunno, man. I have the same problem with this as I do Spiderwebs (another one of theirs I absolutely loved – for a short while) and, a few weeks ago, Beetlebum; that coda sounds interesting for a little while but when you’ve spent the last few years playing plastic instrument video games you can’t help wondering if and when it’s going to JUST END ALREADY. Then there’s the ubiquitous video, which retold the story of the relationship breakup as the band themselves imploding under the weight of Gwen Stefani’s promotion; autobiographical for sure, but somehow a neutering of the deeper story – retelling the personal split might have meant more than the professional one, although that might understandably have been too raw to screen.

5, I think. The subsequent Just A Girl probably scores a couple more points for its appearance in my Fave Film Evar a couple of Popular months later.

AMZ1981

15 February 2014 20:07

I remember chart watchers breathed a collective sigh of relief when this song finally held down the top spot for a second week after the revolving door of one week wonders that started the year. When it notched up a third (and only a major release prevented it from becoming the first four weeker since the summer) we thought early 1997 was just a blip … at the time.

Three very contrasting records would have got to number one if not for Don’t Speak. Week one was I Shot The Sherrif by Warren G (his last hit of significance) and week three was Kula Shaker’s cover of Hush. Between the two Sash hit the runner up spot for what would not be the last time …

iconoclast

15 February 2014 21:58

There’s very little actually wrong with this record: it’s a proper song, produced with plenty of dynamic variation and a sense of development, the Spanish guitar solo is unexpected and effective, and the organ in the chorus is nice too. The thing is, it just leaves me resolutely unmoved; it’s easy to admire for the care taken over it, but I find it difficult to actually *like*. A high SIX.

Billy Hicks

15 February 2014 23:59

24 – Just simply reading the word ‘Sash’ makes me break out into a grin. This is where it all begins for him, he’d go on to have five (five!!) #2 hits without ever reaching #1, plus all bar one of his other releases going top 10 – the most recent in 2008 although that’s a somewhat confusing credit that should technically read ‘Kindervater feat. Molly Smitten-Downes’ – the DJ and the vocalist – but by simply using a sample from a Sash song it got credited to Sash alone.

All five of his #2s – including Encore Une Fois which lost out here – would have been deserving chart toppers, summer ’97’s ‘Ecuador’ perhaps my fave. Perhaps the cruellest miss was in 2000, in a year of almost entirely one-week #1s they choose a quiet week to release ‘Adelante’ only for the #1 from the previous week to hold on at the top.

Elmtree

16 February 2014 02:21

Well, it doesn’t sound a lot like ska, and the double-tracked vocals get a bit syrupy, but there’s a lot of brilliant production and writing decisions here. It’s varied without seeming to shift moods too much, it builds in ways that don’t seem pointless, and like Tom said the fake-out verse means they can get straight back to the chorus without having to dream up some extra lyrics. No Doubt have always sounded to me like a band who deserved to have more great songs than they’ve actually created (maybe they didn’t have the determination to write great lyrics like Madness did?), but this time they nailed it. Eight, verging on nine.

Kinitawowi

16 February 2014 02:52

#26: My Sash! favourite was always the stunning Mysterious Times, although Ecuador runs it a good second. The cruellest notion was his countryman André Tanneberger besting him in the charts (bunny bunny bunny) primarily by virtue of savvier timing…

Also, I quite liked Kula Shaker’s take on Hush. A dangerous thing to admit in a Deep Purple worshipping house, but… come at me, bros.

mapman132

16 February 2014 04:09

Re: Sash! Never heard any of his records (until “Encore Un Fois” just now) but I was aware of his horribly bad luck in attempting to top the UK chart. Didn’t several of his #2’s ultimately outsell the records that blocked them from the top? Having a long-standing affinity for perpetual bridesmaids, I’ve decided I’m going to listen to each of the five at the appropriate point and figure out which I like best. Starting with “Encore Un Fois”: not bad, mildly interesting video, but not a standout for me either. Just good enough that I’m looking forward to hearing the others.

BTW, the US equivalent of Sash! would be Creedence Clearwater Revival: five #2’s with no #1’s. Still, a very different chart (and chart climate), a less singles-oriented genre, and at least they achieved two #1 albums on the Billboard 200. Heck, they even got an entry on this forum.

mapman132

16 February 2014 04:12

#28 Embarrassed to admit that I thought “Hush” was only a Kula Shaker song for a long time. A good song in either version though.

Cumbrian

16 February 2014 12:48

This is perfectly decent but doesn’t stoke my imagination much, despite the subtleties of the production and what not. 7 seems fair – it’s definitely better than average – but it’s not something that I would call a personal all time favourite.

No Doubt always struck me as a bit perfunctory. Good at what they did and undeniably professional but there were other bands coming out of the USA at this time that were more to my tastes – Green Day for instance (bunnied?).

What You Waiting For? Now there’s a classic. Hollaback Girl was bloody irritating though.

Best thing Gwen Stefani has ever been involved in might well be The Aviator, where she played Jean Harlow. She certainly had the look for it, at the very least.

AMZ1981

16 February 2014 18:43

#29 Sash’s misfortune was one of lousy timing – in an era of one week wonders he was stuck behind a big selling number one each time. Curiously I’ve just noticed that only once (Mysterious Times) did he lose out to a new release, on all the other occasions he entered at number two behind an incumbent number one.

Since by the time those other chart toppers roll around we might have much else to discuss I’ll name my favourite of his as Ecuador – partly because there was a stunningly attractive audience member directly behind him when he performed on TOTP.

I didn’t realise Creedence Clearwater Revival had that many runners up in America; I thought they were one hit wonders as a band – and I’ve seen John Fogerty live too.

ciaran

16 February 2014 23:23

There was a lot of promotion of ‘Just A Girl’ in November 1996 even getting a TV advert so when that flopped they looked like another ‘here today gone tomorrow’ act.

That was until this broke through. A sort of US college rock ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ which was really the bands piece de resistance. Epic in scope and a great performance from Gwen Stefani.

I thought I might dislike it a bit but after hearing it again is like the excitement of hearing only for the second time or so.The length of some ballads could sometimes grate with me but the 5 minutes of this seems just right.8

The rest of No Doubt’s work wouldn’t be my cup of tea though. Never liked the Hey Baby’s or It’s my Life cover for example. Stefani’s clown face sad face imagery could get a bit annoying. Never that keen on the solo career either and as some songs have been adopted as sporting anthems of sort they are still played often. I’m sick of hearing ‘the Sweet Escape’ especially.

punctum

17 February 2014 10:00

“I gotta stop pretending who we are.”

Gwen Stefani is the New Pop bedroom worshipper abroad who’s still flicking her nail clippings at her posters; as a solo performer she continues to try just a little too hard to make it a Toni Basil and Thompson Twins sort of 1982, but in her early No Doubt days at the very least she endeavoured to inject her real self into the music which she made or in which she participated; the angry undertow of “Just A Girl” is justified and more than valid. “Don’t Speak” seemed to some at the time a rather too abrupt transition from No Doubt’s standard ska-punkism, a last resort at a board-crossing hit record, but its cloistered doubt cut serenely through the airwaves of the time and has endured rather well.

As with 1997’s other great break-up song, Sleater-Kinney’s “One More Hour,” “Don’t Speak” is about trying with all one’s might (“Our memories/They can be inviting/But some are altogether/Mighty frightening”) to stall for time, to talk the Other out of ending the relationship; her bemused “I really feel/That I’m losing my best friend” scarcely conceals the underlying morbid dread. Essentially she does not want to hear that they are “dying” but unlike “One More Hour,” with Corin Tucker’s increasingly hysterical screams which are answered by Carrie Brownstein’s semi-sympathetic, semi-sarcastic chants of “I know, I know,” Stefani maintains her countenance throughout and we do not hear from the Other side at all. The music is a slower, bleaker expanse of the watery Latinate sunshine of “La Isla Bonita” (indeed “Don’t Speak” could function as a useful understudy of a record by Madonna, who at this stage was occupied trying to kill Eva Peron all over again) with a slight increase in intensity at the middle eight followed by a winsome electrified Spanish guitar instrumental motif which dies out in specks of mournful trumpet synth before Stefani returns to the square one of the now hazy concept of “you and me.” In addition I must emphasise the crucial role of Melissa Hasin’s ‘cello in thickening the arrangement, as well as acknowledging other parallel precedessors, notably Jane Scarpantoni’s contributions to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged In New York and Bob Mould’s Workbook. As the final choruses slowly dim into limbo, Stefani makes her last efforts to stop him from telling her the reasons, if reasons there be, to prevent him from saying anything; she gives him one last taste of what he’s likely to be missing – “I know you’re good, I know you’re real good” – before she lies down with him once again, whispering with suicidal sweetness “Push, push, darling,” entreating him, decreasing the vowels into sighs; perhaps she has averted disaster for now, but how many times will she have to do this again before mechanical repetition kills the last smouldering remnants of wonder? She won’t tell herself, because it hurts.

anto

17 February 2014 10:43

I’m always in two minds about ‘Don’t Speak’. It’s a far better song than a lot of others in the same vein, and yet it’s by no means the best No Doubt single. There was a real freshness about them around this time and like Blondie they turned out to be a band who could try on different styles but still sound like themselves. Having a charismatic lead singer is one way of retaining that identity.

Cumbrian

17 February 2014 10:51

#34. I’d always heard that as “hush, hush, darling” in the run out.

Steve Williams

17 February 2014 11:26

#17 Yes! Top of the Pops changed producers during this record’s run at number one, Ric Blaxill being replaced by Mark Wells, and after it fell from the top spot the performance was shown again on three further occasions while it continued to hang around in the top five. You could cite this, perhaps, as a change in the perception of what made a “proper hit” – rather one that climbed slowly building momentum, because all records now inevitably entered as high as they were ever going to get, the big hits were the ones that dropped down the charts slower than all the others. And from that moment Top of the Pops would regularly feature records going down the charts and the previous week’s number one.

I remember turning my nose up at the guitarist’s Madness T-shirt in the video because I thought it looked ridiculous to wear merchandise from another band in your own band’s video. I also remember visiting a branch of The Gadget Shop which managed to clear out all the customers by playing Oi To The World at great volume.

James BC

17 February 2014 12:11

#34 I’ve often seen you refer to “New pop”, but I’ve never seen the term anywhere else. What does it mean? Forgive my ignorance.

(#36 Yes, I’m pretty sure it is “hush, hush darling” although the “push” mishearing is undeniably spicy.)

JLucas

17 February 2014 12:57

Tragic Kingdom was a huge breakthrough for No Doubt thanks to this and Just A Girl, but the immediate followup album (Return of Saturn) was an almighty flop. I did really enjoy the two major singles from that record though. ‘Simple Kind of Life’ is a very tender, reflective sister to this song with some of Gwen’s most plaintive lyrics – she really excels in expressing very simple but to the point sentiments. (“I always thought I’d be a mom, sometimes I wish for a mistake, the longer that I wait the more selfish that I get…”)

On the other side of the coin, Ex-Girlfriend (Which grazed the UK top 30) is one of her angriest and most bitter songs. They deservedly had their best commercial run with the poptastic ‘Rock Steady’, but it did feel a little bit neutered compared to Saturn, and Stefani’s solo career has generally felt equally lightweight.

Rory

17 February 2014 13:47

I marvel now at the fact that I never heard this at the time – or if I did, it never registered. “Just a Girl” was all over the radio station I used to listen to, Tragic Kingdom was an inescapable presence on record store racks, and “Don’t Speak” was number one in Australia for eight weeks from 9 February 1997 – eight weeks – and yet I had no memory of it before watching the video last week. The recent LL Cool J track was eminently forgettable and didn’t chart well at home, so I could justify my ignorance there, but neither is true here.

So with a fresh ear, untainted by overexposure: I like it. It’s full of interesting flourishes, owes an obvious debt to Madonna, and sounds like it deserves to be number one, rather than being a fluke of one. 7.

glue_factory

17 February 2014 14:39

This track always reminds me of cable-tv. Just before it came out, I moved to London’s Turnpike Lane, where, being on the side of the hill where the transmitter was, meant rubbish TV reception and everywhere, including our cheap rented house, had cable. For the first time, this gave me access to a proper music channel, although nothing so high-end as MTV. Instead we got The Box, a channel where you called a premium rate line to request a specific video, would see your selection number flash by on-screen with a cheery “Thanks!” and then wait. And wait and wait.

And in the hour-or-so we waited for Placebo’s Nancy Boy or lost Euro-classic Hondy, we’d see the video for this an awful lot. Obviously compared to the instant gratification of Youtube or Spotify it was all hideously slow and clunky (and gave you a lot of exposure to No Doubt) but looking back it does seem like an early, teetering step to new models of single consumption.

Cumbrian

17 February 2014 15:01

41: Those dial-a-play/jukebox channels have a hand in some upcoming bunnies too. I was wracking my brains to think whether this might have been the first get to #1 using what I came to think of as “the Kerrang TV effect” – I was going to raise it as as issue around the time of the bunny that got big with Smash. Seems like you have a better memory than me though. There are a couple of other US rock bunnies that seemed to garner an awful lot of support on Kerrang TV, more than I remember them getting on Radio 1, sufficient that they managed to get to #1 off the back of that constituency.

Mark M

17 February 2014 19:53

Re 38: In very broad outline, New Pop was the move in the early ’80s by brainy British people who had involved in punk/post-punk to start making music that was deliberately suited to the charts – if you look the Popular entries for songs by Adam And The Ants and Human League, you can pick up the trail. If you want to immerse yourself fearlessly, try Punctum’s look at ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love.
Other acts that can fit under the banner include Heaven 17, Scritti Politti, Soft Cell, Haircut 100…
And New Pop had a chief ideologue in then-NME writer Paul Morley.

James BC

17 February 2014 23:14

Ah, thanks – that makes sense.

I don’t know whether Gwen would have been the right age or place for all that, though. Weren’t they all Madness fans?

Mark M

17 February 2014 23:29

Re44: Right age? She certainly is – she’s almost exactly a year older than me so I think I can gauge that reasonably well. Right place? Not to read Morley and Penman on the New Pop (and maybe a little young for that, too), but you could certainly hear it – and, more so, watch it on MTV.
‘Weren’t they all Madness fans?’ That seems awfully reductive – who says you couldn’t like Madness and the Human League? (OK, possibly some Madness fans at the time, but most people can’t actually tame their ears like that).

Tom

17 February 2014 23:43

#21 – belatedly replying to Alfred’s comment about how Stefani is an “inexplicable pop star” – I think the video explains her very well. If one of the points of pop – probably the point of pop that’s been most sustained over the 62-year span of Popular – is to repeatedly show its audience what Greil Marcus called “a new way of being in the world”, Stefani fits the bill: the combination of skater athleticism and pin-up glamour is new, and she makes it make instant sense.

I didn’t care much about her either way at this point – in the early 00s I loved her though, her restlessness and enthusiasm and willingness to try apparently stupid things. Dancehall, call-and-response, dadrock (one of her best songs – “Early Winter” – was written by Keane of all people), YODELLING for gods sake – it didn’t always work but she was an avatar of early-00s poptimism, the pop star whose actual output seemed to respond best to the kid-in-a-sweetshop listening glut P2P networks had unlocked. I wish I was covering her again.

swanstep

18 February 2014 02:46

Well said Tom, 46. For further evidence of just how much Stefani had cracked it by the mid ’00s consider how closely Gaga emulated Stefani on some of the best album tracks on The Fame, e.g., Summer Boy.

JLucas

18 February 2014 13:05

Publically admitting her second album largely consisted of songs that were left over from sessions for her first never struck me as brilliant marketing from Mme Stefani.

I appreciate her willingness to try new things, but the more self-consciously ‘wacky’ elements of her solo career could be really grating. Wind It Up must surely be one of the very worst pop hits by a major recording artist of the 00s.

Agree that Early Winter was great though. Wonderful Life was the other take-home from the largely awful Sweet Escape album for me. I can understand why the title track was huge, but like most Akon stuff it makes my toes curl.

James BC

18 February 2014 13:06

Definitely. It says something about Gwen’s star quality that her working with Eve, Doctor Dre, the Neptunes, Akon and the rest never seemed forced or incongruous. And as diverse as they were, the tracks always felt like Gwen Stefani tracks. She could walk into any room, anywhere in the world, and instantly be the coolest person in it.

Iain Mew

18 February 2014 13:23

#47 Nevermind album tracks, the moment I got Gaga was the “Paparazzi” single/video and the realisation of how much she shared with Gwen’s whole approach (of course, they coincidentally share the name Stefani too).

Annoying pedant point – her two solo albums were 2004 and 2006, so not really early ’00s! I guess if you include Rock Steady it works more.

wpDiscuz

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