After going on hiatus in 2013, No Doubt are one of several major acts reuniting for the 2024 festival season. Although they're set to perform at Coachella in April, the band supposedly have no further performances scheduled for the year because frontwoman Gwen Stefani has show commitments of her own, as well as plans for new solo music.
But before that, Stefani is prepping for Coachella and in a season of reflecting on all things No Doubt — including which of the band's songs now make her "almost throw up in [her] mouth." She appeared on the latest episode KROQ's Klein & Ally Audacity Check-In interview series, explaining that the old material still feels very fresh.
“I can’t listen to a lot of the songs because they speak so clearly to me,” Stefani said. “And it’s like you have regret and mistakes you’ve made. Most of the songs are about that. If I do ‘Ex-Girlfriend’ — even when I say it, I almost throw up in my mouth because… it’s just like, ‘Oh my God.’ It just brings you right back.”
The track from No Doubt's fourth album 2000's Return of Saturn — which includes lines like, "I kinda always knew I'd end up your ex-girlfriend," — was written about her relationship with Gavin Rossdale of Bush, whom Stefani married in 2002 and divorced in 2015. It even references the Bush song "Dead Meat": "You say you're gonna burn before you mellow / I will be the one to burn you."
“There are lots of times when you’d be on tour doing the repetitive songs, but it’s not the songs," Stefani said. "You’re not in the songs. You’re there with these new people every night and they’re receiving the songs. So that’s where you get the energy and you relive that moment with them.”
She went on to say that she was very naive before rising to stardom with the band when "Don't Speak" became a hit in the mid-'90s. Stefani lived with her parents until she was 26, and didn't travel outside of California until a family trip to Italy when she was 21. "I cried when we left," she told Klein & Ally. "I was like, ‘I’ll never get to go back to my Italy’."
You can listen to the interview in full below.