Beth Ray Writes

Next weekend is the first weekend of the Coachella festival in America. Headline acts are Lana Del Rey, Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat. One band I’m very excited for is No Doubt who are making a comeback just in time for the festival after a 9 year break (their last tour was in 2015).

I became a No Doubt fan after reading all of the Princess Diaries books where the author Meg Cabot referenced a lot of ska music and in particular one band, No Doubt. If you thought I was going to pretend I first discovered them by watching a lot of MTV you were wrong. Hearing their heavy bass songs (Hella Good), feminist lyrics (Just a girl) and fun break-up songs (Ex-Girlfriend) as a teenager I couldn’t resist listening to the band.

No Doubt formed in 1987 and released their first self-titled album in 1992. They followed it up with their second album ‘The Beacon Street Collection’ before making a huge impact on the music scene when their third album was released in 1994 with ‘Tragic Kingdom’. This album provided some of their biggest hits such as ‘Don’t Speak’, ‘Spiderwebs’, ‘Just a girl’ and ‘Sunday Morning’.

For me, No Doubt were a breakthrough ska-punk band that made it big in both America and in the United Kingdom and taught a new generation what ska is. They were funny, cool, eccentric, weird and random in all of the best ways and some of their interviews from the 90’s remind me of what a great time it was to grow up listening to music back then. There is a interview in particular with VH1 where it follows them around touring with U2 and it shows a side to the band we rarely see anymore with artists, especially with PR people now being heavily involved and filtering out any rawness we may get from them. If you really want a deep dive then you can watch this video here.

‘Don’t Speak’ is by far their most played track with over 1 billion views on Youtube, however my favourite tracks are their other singles. ‘Just a girl’, ‘Sunday Morning’, ‘Spiderwebs’, ‘New’ and ‘Hella Good’.

No Doubt are one of my favourite bands and Gwen Stefani as a lyricist is majorly underrated so I hope the Coachella appearance might be a sign we may see a world tour this year from the band (we can only hope). I’ve pasted below some of my favourite No Doubt tracks and in particular their live performance of Spiderwebs, which i’d highly recommend watching first.

Beth x