Gwen Stefani Didn’t Start Writing Songs Until Her Heart Got ‘Destroyed and Broken’

It took a painful breakup for Gwen Stefani to find her voice. 

Stefani started performing with No Doubt in the mid-’80s. But other members of the band took the lead when it came to crafting the group’s pop-punk tunes. It wasn’t until nearly a decade into her time with the group that she started writing songs for what would be the band’s breakout album, Tragic Kingdom, following the end of her relationship with bassist Tony Kanal. 

Gwen Stefani said she ‘found myself’ when writing ‘Tragic Kingdom’ songs 

Stefani and her older brother Eric formed No Doubt in 1986, along with their friend John Spence. Kanal joined the group, and he and Stefani started dating. Spence died in 1987, but the band continued, adding new members along the way. 

Even in No Doubt’s early days, Stefani says she was a bit of the odd one out. 

“I was the only girl that was in a band in my scene,” she recalled in a 2017 interview with Nylon. “The bands out of Orange County were mostly punk. So, the bands that No Doubt was playing with were those bands. It wasn’t necessarily the music that I was listening to. I was listening to Bread and ‘70s love songs, but I loved being able to get up there and having to prove I can compete with these guys and I’m going to get the crowd going.”

In 1994, Kanal and Stefani broke up. She was devastated. She channeled her feelings into music through songs like “Don’t Speak.” Around the same time, her brother left the band. 

“It wasn’t even until I was in the band for almost nine years [that I started writing],” she said. “I didn’t even write a song. My brother wrote all the songs, and then when I got my heart destroyed and broken, that’s when I wrote Tragic Kingdom, and that’s when I found myself. Before that, I was passive.”

The ‘No Doubt’ singer realized she had a ‘a gift’ 

It took years for Stefani to start to explore songwriting. But once she began, she learned she possessed a talent she didn’t know she had. 

“I started writing songs. I didn’t even know that I could,” she told iHeartRadio in 2021. “Nobody taught me. I don’t know where they came from. It wasn’t until I realized I had this gift to write my feelings out that I started feeling empowered.”

Decades later, writing songs still gives The Voice coach that feeling of power. And just like she did when working on Tragic Kingdom, her most recent work still draws heavily from her own life. (Her next album, Bouquet, is due out on Nov. 15.)

“I’m never going to write anything that’s not just completely reflective of what’s going on in my life,” she told People in 2023. “Before I wrote my first song, I was this dyslexic girl who didn’t know how I fit in. Then I was like, ‘Oh, this is my magic power.’ I’m so honored that I got the gift to be able to write music, and I take it super seriously.”

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