Day 340: No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom
I’m off tomorrow, so today is the start of my long weekend. I tried about three different albums before settling on something that I haven’t listened to since I was a kid, but that I definitely enjoyed at the time: No Doubt. I haven’t heard them since the halcyon days before we knew Gwen Stefani was advertising JD Vance’s prayer app – you can buy a prayer subscription for just $9.99 a month, just as God intended. Not to sound like Martin Luther but like, come on.
Album cover courtesy of Interscope
No Doubt was formed in 1986 in Anaheim, California, by keyboardist Eric Stefani and vocalist John Spence. They added Eric’s sister Gwen as a background singer, as well as Jery McMahon as a guitarist, Chris Leal on bass, Chris Webb as a drummer, Gabriel Gonzalez and Alan Meade playing trumpet, and Tony Meade playing saxophone. Bassist Tony Kanal also joined the band, and started dating Gwen Stefani.
Founding member John Spence committed suicide in 1987, so Gwen moved from background vocalist to lead vocalist. They got signed by Interscope in 1990 and released their self-titled debut in 1992. By 1995, they were having issues with Interscope that escalated so much that Eric Stefani left the band, leaving Gwen Stephani to become their primary songwriter.
Tragic Kingdom was released in 1995 as the group’s third album, and their first album with Gwen Stephani writing the majority of the lyrics. It became a massive hit, spending nine weeks as number one on the Billboard 200. It also earned them Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Rock Album, and it helped pave the way for more ska bands getting signed and the genre going more mainstream.
I remember loving No Doubt as a kid, and I do still think they’re good, albeit not as good as I thought when I was younger. As an album, Tragic Kingdom is all over the place, but so much so that it’s just impressive: there’s obviously a general ska theme, but it bounces through other genres so much that I thought a few times that this can’t still be the same album. And many of the songs are modern classics: “Sunday Morning”, "Spiderwebs", and “Don’t Speak” are still just so damn good.
Every time I hear ska I think of that old tweet where someone said that ska is what plays in a 13-year-old kid’s head when they get extra mozzarella sticks, and it is painfully accurate. But No Doubt’s version of ska manages to be a little bit chic, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. Tragic Kingdom does mainly stand the test of time, I’m happy to report. It’s an 8.5/10.