Gwen Cuts Loose

Disturbing but true: listen to rock radio these days and you'll hear a woman's voice only if it belongs to Gwen Stefani or Evanescence's Amy Lee. Lee sure sold a lot of records in the past few years, but Stefani is the only true female rock star left on radio or MTV. "She's toured from when she was eighteen years old playing small clubs, to playing small theaters, then amphitheaters and then arenas," says Iovine. "She is the only woman on pop radio right now who has toured with that vigor, and she's the only one who could as easily tour with U2, Green Day and OutKast."

Almost ten years after "Just a Girl" hit airwaves, Stefani has an instantly recognizable voice, an inimitable sense of style and an impact on popular culture on par with Madonna's. "There will never be anyone else quite like her," says Garbage singer Shirley Manson, who has known Stefani since the mid-Nineties and toured with No Doubt in 2002. "She's got an extraordinary mixture of the elements that make a great pop star and the elements that make a great rock star. She's like the perfect Trojan horse: She seems very benign and wholesome, but underneath lurks an incredible toughness and powerful directness. Nobody can copy her, because she's this uniquely extraordinary contradiction."

Indeed, Stefani is one of the only Nineties stars who has managed to hold the attention of the ever-churning teen audience. Her solo debut, Love, Angel, Music, Baby, sold half a million copies in its first two weeks. She recently scored a pair of Grammy nominations: one for "What You Waiting For?" and one with No Doubt for their cover of Talk Talk's "It's My Life." (If she wins both, her Grammy collection will expand to five.) In December, she made her big-screen debut -- albeit in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role -- playing Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator. And last night, she went to the holiday party for her clothing line, which is preparing its fourth collection for fall 2005.

Love, Angel, Music, Baby is the kind of Eighties-style electro dance album that Stefani grew up on in Orange County, California. It's so Eighties, in fact, that members of New Order are the backing band on "The Real Thing," alongside collaborations with OutKast's Andre 3000, Dr. Dre and Eve, the Neptunes, Dallas Austin and Linda Perry. "Right now in my life, I'm all about trying things I've never done," Stefani says. "I'm a woman and I'm thirty-five. I don't have that much time left to do this kind of pop record. Let's be real about it."

[Excerpt From Issue 966 — January 27, 2005]