Noel Gallagher, No Doubt and the moment music changed in the 1990s
Part of the beauty of the 1990s rock scene was that no one knew what the hell they were doing. As much as artists might have had a clear model to work off from the moment grunge hit, the genre’s preemptive demise left room for everyone and their mother to try their hand at the big time. Although Oasis were happy to proclaim themselves as leaders of rock’s next revolution, Noel Gallagher admitted that hearing someone like No Doubt on the radio was rock and roll taking a step backwards.
At the same time, are we just going to ignore that the band’s entire career was about taking things back to basics? The Manchester scene had been dominated by nothing but dance music, so the freshest thing in the world would have been a few unlikely lads with guitars in their hands trying to put together the best music that they could.
It’s not like Gallagher was super original, either, taking the same cues from acts like The Beatles when throwing together his melodies. That kind of sound was bound to be retro just by design, but No Doubt had something much more clever up their sleeves. Outside of Gwen Stefani’s incredible voice, their mix of different influences from punk to ska left a huge impact on what the back half of the decade sounded like.
They had grown up in the same stomping grounds that would spit out acts like Sublime, but an album like Tragic Kingdom holds up for a reason. While not necessarily part of the riot grrl movement, tracks like ‘Just A Girl’ and ‘Spiderwebs’ were some of the greatest female-led rock songs of the era, almost as if Alanis Morrissette had a little bit more grit in her voice and had Reel Big Fish as her backing band.
Despite their massive influence on rock, Noel considered their biggest hit, ‘Don’t Speak’, to be one of the worst songs he had heard at the time, telling Rolling Stone, “This is what’s wrong with music! Fucking hell, that No Doubt. Liam says he likes that song, and I can’t believe it. God almighty. I’m sure [Stefani] is a very nice person. but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the song is rubbish”.
Granted, it’s not like Noel was immune from making fallible music, either. While he wouldn’t hear a bad word about his band from anybody, his chastising one of No Doubt’s greatest hits when he was on the verge of releasing Be Here Now is one of the biggest cases of the pot calling the kettle black in the entire 1990s.
Then again, No Doubt wasn’t long for this world anyway. As much as Stefani was able to make electrifying music every time she lit up the stage, there were only so many times she could do it before she started reaching out for a solo career. And with that, all of the nervy punk guitars were replaced with Neptunes-style beats, while Noel was also entering an electronic-leaning phase of Oasis with Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Oasis was meant to be straight-head rock and roll, but seeing them moving away from their roots at the same time Stefani was is either incredibly ironic or meticulously planned out.
