1995 - a likely story
No Doubt, 'Spiderwebs'
Do you have any Unskippables? That is, any albums where you won’t skip a single song every time you listen. Big Algorithm may have done its level best to alter my listening habits, but I can still appreciate great albums as a whole, rising and falling, rather than just as a clutch of similar songs. For me, Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt is one of those albums.
The variation in styles throughout the album, weaving in and out, keeps everything fresh. It’s brilliant. I’d put the whole album on this mixtape if I could, but you’d get bored of that, and I really am trying to keep it to a single entry for every band. So we’ll settle for the opener instead.
When I was 12, all ska bands were from England. Specifically London, or the Midlands. Never mind the actual origins of ska music, I’d found it highly unusual to hear an American band making that sound with the trumpets that my uncle liked. To be fair, my ska collection didn’t extend beyond a few Madness records that I’d commandeered from said uncle, and a compilation CD which another aunty gave to me and my brother.
Considering Tragic Kingdom came out in The Year After The Year Punk Broke, I was still a couple of years away from hearing this song, and all the other songs that would form the backbone of my musical tastes for a good long while. But I’m so glad ‘Spiderwebs’ is one of the songs that found me first. It’s a song co-written and sung by a woman, about her own life experience (specifically, a persistent admirer) which takes in a wide variety of emotions about that experience. It’s more than just a relief that this band found me early on, it’s some of these particular songs.
He’s only credited on a handful of songs on Tragic Kingdom, but on previous albums, keyboard player and Gwen Stefani’s brother Eric was the band’s chief songwriter. He wrote or co-wrote every song on album one, and a good chunk of album two. But amid much tangling with the record label over their creative contributions, Eric stepped back from the band. It meant Gwen took on a greater share and had the opportunity to write songs more personal to her. Her own experiences, living her life. Here’s a quote about the song ‘Squeal’, written solely by Eric Stefani on their second album, from its Wikipedia page:
“The lyrics describe a female criminal who is under fire when her partner betrays their trust and reveals her behavior to the police. For revenge, she resolves to kill him.”
Gwen’s second sole songwriting credit on their follow-up album, Return of Saturn, was called ‘Simple Kind of Life’. Certainly simpler than some of Eric’s songs, which I’d find much harder to relate to. And maybe that was the secret to selling albums.
Obviously as a 12 year-old male resident of northern England, I can relate deeply to the experiences of a young woman’s life lived in southern California. But either way, this album – and as one of my highlights, this song – helped me navigate my widening world, and how I related to other people. I’m only a little bit embarrassed to admit that another of my windows on the world of growing up was Dawson’s Creek – I know, once again, how much my life did not resemble theirs – and weekend mornings on Channel 4 would be my weekly appointment for adulting. A later episode of the show featured the main characters attending an arena concert of No Doubt, and the episode itself was called ‘Spiderwebs’. (Yes, I didn’t actually see any Dawson’s Creek when it was actually good.)
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And another thing: these catchy and relatable lyrics were more ‘me’ than other bands I was yet to discover; personally-charged, rather than politically charged. I appreciated the everyday-ness of these songs more than the nameless, faceless, sticking it to The Maaaan songs which typified punk rock music.
Bands like Rancid – whose ...And Out Come the Wolves is another Unskippable released in the very same year – also put a more personal punk rock spin on their sound, singing songs about their surroundings rather than playing to any political point of view.
A couple of years would pass before I’d broadened my horizons enough for three chords and some sloganeering, but No Doubt was probably the first band in my record collection to bring the smaller details of the wider world to my doorstep, when I felt ready to listen to what it sounded like.