When I first heard “Hollaback Girl,” a battle anthem between
\nwarring cheerleaders, I knew this one was a winner. Finally, a
\nterrific pop album for grown-ups. A solo effort by the voice of No
\nDoubt,
\nLove. Angel. Music. Baby<\/i> uses a wealth of eighties
\nsynthesizers, clever humor through pop culture references, and for
\nextra fun invites all sorts of undergraduate anthropology (an
\nearlier review attempt of mine describes it as “a pink and eggshell
\nsuburban American world with cracks of sexuality and consumerism
\nknowingly warping the Barbie atmosphere”).<\/p>\n
It’s definitely pop but with extra layers. Aside from
\ncheerleaders putting their pompoms down in order to take each other
\nout, “Bubble Pop Electric” features a horny suburban teenage girl
\nwho is far from pretending she’s above showing it (“drive in movie
\n\/ drive into me”), “Cool” is how two former lovers accidentally
\nmeet each other, each with a new lover in tow, and how nice it is
\nthat they can be cool about it (what, that never happened to you?),
\nand “Harajuku Girls” is a guilty orgy of cuteness, dropping plenty
\nof “super-kawai” brand names and parsed Japanese expressions.<\/p>\n
Those tracks are great but the ones I found the most interesting
\ninvolve me using a bit of undergraduate literary analysis. “Danger
\nZone” describes the breakdown of a personality who has relied on
\nthe lies of fashion magazines for her self-image and is beginning
\nto realize what a sandy foundation this is (“Now we share the
\ncloset, now you’ve let me come inside \/ And now you’re finally
\nundressing, and I feel like I might die”). A song made with Andre
\n3000 from OutKast, “Long Way to Go” tells us about the stares and
\nabuse an interracial relationship still has to endure in our
\nsupposedly enlightened times. Stefani sings it with grim restraint,
\neffectively contrasting it to the bubblegum sound of the rest of
\nthe album. We have a long way to go.<\/p>\n
Of course there are more straightforward pop songs harking back
\nto Cyndi-Madonna territory with “Crash,” “The Real Thing” and
\n“Serious,” but these songs have filler position near the back of
\nthe album. Stefani is not after a solo career (she has repeatedly
\nemphasized that
\nLove<\/i> is a side project), but I wonder about the girl that
\nwalked off at the end of “Danger Zone.” I guess you can say she
\nbecame Tori Amos. I hope, though, that Stefani herself will tell
\nthat story someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7131],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-38273","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gwen-stefani","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38273"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38273"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}