When I was approaching 30 last year, I wasn’t aware of too much media that actually focused on the experiences I was having. Sure, there were those tales of navigating the tumultuous landscape called life, but there was something about approaching this new decade of my life and feeling like a period of my life was over. I couldn’t fully explain it.
I technically began having this feeling around 25 when I had a quarter-life crisis, feeling like my life had stalled out. Everything was wrong and I needed to reset my career. While I haven’t quite gotten to the place I want to be, the accomplishments I’ve made are some of my happiest, reflecting who I am as a person and artist. My late-20s was a period of rediscovery, of taking things seriously that I had been doing casually for most of my life.
In 2019, I self-published my book “Apples & Chainsaws” which was my eulogy to my 20s. To me it was a summary of what I was leaving behind, believing that I would never be that person again. The road ahead was scary, and I needed to excise my demons before they festered.
It was only after this point that I began realizing that this was a very common phenomenon: to enter your 30s and be unsure about what anything meant in your life. In the past week, I’ve reviewed Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” which was a record tackling this very subject through the lens of a Catholic confessional. Then a few days later, by some luck, No Doubt’s “Return to Saturn” celebrated its 20th anniversary.
The title is a reference to a phenomenon where it takes Saturn 29.4 years to complete a full orbit. In metaphorical terms, the return is a moment where humans enter a period of self-evaluation. I know that I was definitely critical and nostalgic during this time, questioning who I wanted to be going forward. From the sound of it, Gwen Stefani was in the exact same camp, once claiming that she wanted this record to question her place in the world.
That was a very good question for a variety of reasons. For starters, No Doubt was easily the breakout ska band of the 90s, whose record “Tragic Kingdom” was considered one of the best in the genre and sold millions. Stefani became a fashion icon and their ability to do both pogo-bouncing tunes and slow-tempered ballads gave them a diversity that was more accessible than their peers. It doesn’t help that if you ask most people about third-wave ska that they’ll say it was awful. Whether or not they intended it, No Doubt’s evolution kept them from that obscurity.
It also helped that they were one of the most in demand groups at the time. They were now courting top-end music video producers like Hype Williams and photographer David LaChapelle. They could afford to experiment and evolve their sound. As a result, “Return of Saturn” wasn’t just a rehash. It was an evolution that’s this fascinating middle-ground between the more straightforward “Tragic Kingdom” and the dance-heavy “Rock Steady” that proceeded this.
Even then, it can be seen as their most honest record and one of the last points where the entire band was on equal footing. Stefani was only a few years off from a solo pop career. Here they got to dive into her soul as she sang songs about how she felt at the turn of a decade in her life. She had these fantasies of being a mother, of settling down and having the idealized version of a family. She already had the celebrity boyfriend in Bush singer Gavin Rossdale, so everything was in place to make them the alt-rock dream couple.
That makes it amusing then that “Ex-Girlfriend” was a song initially critical of Rossdale, saying “Another ex-girlfriend on your list/But we should’ve thought of that before we kissed.” As one of four singles from the album, it was another fast moving song that captured the emotional struggles of Stefani. Even the fact that this song holds a reference to the Bush song “Dead Meat” only shows how slyly they were into each other. Considering that other singles included “Bathwater” and “New,” they were not short of any major hooks. They could still perform with the best of them.
Though if there was any fascinating pivot, it was the second song and most successful single on the album. “Simple Kind of Life” is the song that most directly makes clear what Stefani wanted with the album. With a music video that features her running in a wedding dress, her hair sprayed pink, she dreams of a simple life.
I always thought I'd be a mom
Sometimes I wish for a mistake
The longer that I wait the more selfish that I get
You seem like you'd be a good dad
This is a woman who wants to settle down and start the next chapter of her life, but not without considering the path she’s laid out. Her independence is what has made her image so exciting. Still, those thrills of entering a new, uncertain chapter of her life make the song this rich look into a moment in life many women face. What will being a mother be like?
It’s the conflict that the whole album has, of a woman who is both too young to settle down and too old to be writing silly love songs. The music content is some of Stefani’s most mature, even alluding to her motherhood fantasy in language choice. Terms like pregnant get thrown around in “Bathwater,” making it clear that even when she wasn’t overtly talking about putting a ring on a guy’s finger, there was some Freudian slip going on.
Songs like "Six Feet Underground" question her mortality as she associates her birthday with the fact that she's going to die one day. The song "Artificial Sweetener" even features a mention of the familiar phrase:
There's even discussion of her own beauty in "Magic's in the Makeup" where she states that:The return of Saturn
Assessing my life
Second guessing...
If you bore me then I'm comfortable
If you interest me I'm scared
My attraction paralyzes me
No courage to show my true colors that exist
But I want to be the real thing
But if you catch my eye can't be authentic
The one's I loath are the one's that know me the best
More than anything, it's interesting to see how she plays with lyrics and imagery. At every turn she's mixing her fear of irrelevance with iconography that consumes every woman's life, like artificial sweetener, makeup, and marriage. These are things they're taught to strive for, and in a way this is Stefani at some of her lyrical best commenting on how it's impacted her, shaping her worldview and making her into the woman she wants to be. She was even getting politically conscious on songs like "Comforting Lie," which questioned the ethics of the world around her.
Beyond the lyrical content, the thing that makes the album far more interesting than anything before or after is what they do with it. They have evolved past ska and 2-Tone. If you look up the various genres that these songs have been compared to, they include ska, reggae, 2-Tone, nu-metal, Gilbert & Sullivan, flamenco, new wave, hip-hop, power ballads, swing, and New Orleans funeral brass.
In just about anyone else’s hands, that would be considered problematic. How could anyone ever hope to have a sound this diverse and have it be anything resembling coherence? While some of it is a stretch (is she really rapping on “Ex-Girlfriend”?) there are definitely signs that they are not wanting to be trapped by one genre. They want to expand and become the great rock band who can rock the house. It’s undeniable now, in a time where Stefani has broken out as a household name. But in 2000, it was wild to know that a record this personal can be so vibrant and sometimes campy, reflecting those youthful desires clashing with the deeper thoughts of maturity.
What was the road ahead for no Doubt? They had one hit album and were going to determine the road ahead with this. These weren’t simply songs about Stefani trying to establish her place in the world. They were self-reflective looks into a life that now had the experience, touring the world and being seen as this strong, independent figure in music during a time often seen as a boy’s club. She wondered why she was depressed all the time and reading Sylvia Plath. Like all artists, she came to a conclusion through her work.
Thankfully it’s an eclectic mix that doesn’t disappoint. Sure, some may be disappointed that this isn’t more ska-oriented, but what’s incredible is to note how the driving guitar on many tracks still works in its place. The use of barroom pianos and percussion create these richer tapestries, elevating their sound into something more interactive. “Bathwater” received divisive reviews at the time, but was ahead of its time for how it mixed ska with swing and more of a style you’d find in vaudeville. It’s campy, but this was a band known for their personality.
On one hand, it’s amazing to think that Stefani was ever this unsure of herself. Critics at the time were quick to comment on how it felt like she was complaining about having things too perfect. After all, we only ever saw from the outside what her life was like. There was nothing to suggest what she was doing personally. This is pretty much how most female artists throughout history have been treated: trivialized for showing emotion, and that may why this record doesn’t seem to have as much cultural familiarity.
But where would No Doubt be without songs like “Simple Kind of Life”? Sure “New” was a fantastic song whose synthesizers felt reminiscent of The B-52’s, but what happened when Stefani got personal? Songs like the reggae “Marry Me” find her experiencing something common among women of her age. She was entering a new phase of her life and desperately needing to find stability. Any song about finding love comes from a grown-up relationship, assessing problems like mature adults. She wants the perfect husband. Even when bouncing around, she’s thinking about her own personal happiness.
That explains why they were capable of breaking out and becoming something greater. Instead of just vowing to make fun ska records, they were going to push music forward, evolving their sound and introducing the masses to things like rock steady. They weren’t the only ones doing it, but nobody had a platform that big. Even the fact that they had music videos by high-end directors showed how in demand they were.
No Doubt would prevail. If I have to be honest, their four singles off of this album have incredible staying power. While “Ex-Girlfriend” is the most popular, they all have been songs I’ve heard on the radio in the past few years. People still clamor for that Southern California cool where even the most experimental song can get you dancing. Similarly, the sad songs (“Suspension Without Suspense”) had this way of digging into your soul, making you recognize the struggles as something universal.
That is of course if you’re the right age to appreciate the nuance of Stefani’s lyrics. The record works on its own, but considering how Top 40 feels geared towards the young, a lot of the album’s best moments likely didn’t hit for the same audience who loved “Tragic Kingdom.” Sure, some could say that the record was overlong (“Staring Problem” does feel disposable), but it largely gets by on this energy that you only understand in your late-20s.
It’s a moment where the world feels like it’s changing. Your friends are settling down and having families, stuck in the lives that they are about to lead. It’s scary, especially if things didn’t work out for you if your dreams largely went ignored. It’s your last grasp of youth pouring out in a quest to be taken seriously, and it’s here that Stefani finds a perfect middle-ground.
Having now heard two brilliant records that are basically about turning 30, I realize that I am less alone in my aging process. Still, what I find fascinating is how these moments in hindsight are far more ambitious than anything that came before and never quite as tried as what comes later. It’s got this minor imperfection that is so charming that it makes the record even more of a masterpiece. I recognize the earnestness, the desire to expand your identity as it cements itself forever in place. Thankfully for Stefani, it was to do anything to write a catchy song and have some of her greatest lines to date. I just wish her later work was allowed to embrace the personal moments of life with as much clarity as they do here.
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