It’s been 24 years since No Doubt released their Return of Saturn single, “Ex-Girlfriend,” but the track still brings up emotions for Gwen Stefani.
“I can’t listen to a lot of the songs because they speak so clearly to me,” the singer told KROQ’s Klein & Ally during an Audacy Check-In interview this week. “And it’s like you have regret and mistakes you’ve made. Most of the songs are about that. If I do ‘Ex-Girlfriend,’ even when I say it, I almost throw up in my mouth because…it’s just like, ‘Oh my God.’ It just brings you right back.”
She continued, “There are lots of times when you’d be on tour doing the repetitive songs, but it’s not the songs. You’re not in the songs. You’re there with these new people every night and they’re receiving the songs. So that’s where you get the energy and you relive that moment with them. I can remember when ‘Don’t Speak’ came out. My family was very conservative. I was very naive. The only place we’d ever traveled to was San Francisco. I’m not kidding you. We would [do]…Catalina Island, Big Bear. [I lived at home until I was 26] and when I was 21, they called this family meeting, and we were like, ‘We’re going to go to Italy next year, and it’s going to be this big trip.’ And we did. I cried when we left. I was like, ‘I’ll never get to go back to my Italy.’”
After going on what sounded like a permanent hiatus in 2013, the singer will be reuniting with longtime bandmates bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young for this year’s Coachella festival in April.
“We’ll see you in the desert this April!!!,” read a statement on No Doubt’s social accounts last week announcing the Coachella gig alongside a stacked roster featuring Lana Del Rey, Tyler, The Creator and Doja Cat as headliners, along with Peso Pluma, Lil Uzi Vert, Blur, Ice Spice, J Balvin, Jhené Aiko and more.
Listen to Audacy’s full interview with Gwen Stefani below.
