One of my favorite things about Olivia Rodridgo, that makes me really admire her as an artist, is that she is a fan. She loves things unapologetically, and she pays regular homage to her inspirations. She had Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne both perform with her on different stops of the SOUR (2021) tour and routinely gushes about how Phoebe Bridgers’ music and subsequent friendship has shaped her career. Articulating that appreciation and sharing some of the success you find is an essential step in the path to earning respect in the industry.
When I saw Olivia Rodrigo on her final night of her North American tour in San Francisco, she paused between songs to tell the crowd how much she loves Gwen Stefani. It is not even remotely unlikely that this moment was the first exposure some of that audience had to Gwen Stefani, at least consciously and by name. She then performed “Just a Girl” by No Doubt, an iconic song that is by no means a deep cut but which is rapidly losing cultural relevancy nearly thirty years after its initial release.
I’ve never been a huge No Doubt fan—I did an insane cover of “Tragic Kingdom” with my band in high school, recordings of which I hope never resurface—but I do love Gwen Stefani’s solo work. I was the exact right age for “Sweet Escape” to really have pervaded my childhood and I was obsessed with This Is What The Truth Feels Like (2016) when I was in high school. In April of 2020, when things were sort of bad but mostly weird, I made this playlist, one of a smattering of few pure pop phases I had during that time period. Like I said in this issue of Currently, I was really not okay! But the music is good, so we’ll just focus on that.
“Cool” is the fourth track off of Gwen Stefani’s debut solo album Love Angel Music Baby (2004). It follows “Rich Girl” and “Holloback Girl,” two of her most popular songs, and serves up an entirely different vibe from the rest of the album’s raucous intensity; it’s been compared to Madonna and Cyndi Lauper ballads of the 1980s. It’s been speculated that the lyrical content about remaining close with a former partner is about her relationship with fellow No Doubt member Tony Kanal:
And after all the obstacles
It's good to see you now with someone else
And it's such a miracle that
You and me are still good friends
After all that we've been through
I know we’re cool
As someone who is chronically friends with their exes, I feel seen by this song. One of the things I appreciate about Gwen Stefani’s writing is the specificity, which is more rare in pop music than in other genres. Each song on This Is What The Truth Feels Like speaks to a different aspect of falling in love, a unique feeling or moment. Her lyrical talent is finding something compelling and fleshing it out into a whole world.
Caroline Polachek’s “Door” similarly speaks to a very bittersweet feeling. “Door” has always really moved me, but when I saw Caroline most recently at Primavera, she prefaced the performance by saying, “This is a love song.” I had never really thought of “Door” in that way; it felt sad in an ambient way but hadn’t really ever sunk in as something kind of beautiful as well:
Took ten laps 'round the planet
To prove what I wasn't
And the door slams hard behind you
When you leave the house of judgment
I’ve started keeping a list of songs that made me cry unexpectedly, because I was definitely not planning on having a little cry in the middle of the night at this music festival, but there I was, single tears streaming down my face like they do in the movies. I was thinking about all of the different phases of life I’ve been through already, all the people I’ve loved and lost, how you can’t keep anything forever, how you’ll eventually find the thing you’ve been looking for.
I was also wondering what “Door” is a love song for—certainly not a partner, at least not in entirety; maybe for yourself, but that theory also has its limits; maybe for her former band Chairlift, which disbanded after ten years before Caroline began her solo career; maybe to Caroline’s former husband, to whom she was married for five years. Love songs are hard to pin down generally, but it was arresting to hear the term applied to “Door.” While still can’t say that I know what this song is about, I know that Caroline absolutely knows what love is. She got it absolutely right, in a way that, like love, is impossible to describe.
My favorite MUNA song is on this playlist. “Taken” has a grip on me that is rather alarming in longevity and intensity, but I can’t go more than a few days without screaming along with it in my car. I can’t relate exactly to the premise, but I turn to “Taken” whenever I want something I can’t have:
I'll be a very good girl
I won't even think about it
I'm just feeling like I can't help it
I love to long for something! It’s a disease, but let’s not unpack that here. See you next week.
Reading that "Just a Girl" is closing in on 30 is enough to bring a tear to my eye. I wish I could tell you time slows down as you go, but we'd both know I was lying.
As a songwriter, those moments when someone says "How did you know that about me?" are priceless. I won't cry when I am in pain, but there are definitely moments when I am attending a great gig, that I will shed a tear because the music, lyric or performance has moved me .