Is Gwen Stefani A One Album Wonder?

Inflammatory title aside, I would like to discuss what everyone in the world has been clearly been talking about lately, and that is, did Gwen Stefani's solo career ever deliver on the promise created off of Love Angel Music Baby? I would argue no, it did not.

So while I haven't formally reviewed it, I think Love Angel Music Baby is a pretty great album that time has been extremely kind to. I think it's held up incredibly well, and really only has Harajuku Girls and Long Way To Go as potentially skippable tracks. I think it makes an excellent blend of new wave, synthpop, and a few more r&b sounding tracks to make a surprisingly consistent and cohesive body of work. Did it lay the groundwork for a more 80s electronic inspired pop scene in the coming years? Maybe. There was the electroclash scene and that of post-punk revival at the time, but in terms of A-list pop music, I'm not so sure we were really getting that at the time.

Yet it's not even the cohesiveness or potential influence of this album that makes it such a standout for me, it's the sheer fact that it has so many damn good songs. There were 6 singles released over a year and half for this album, and yet there are still multiple songs that I can firmly say were robbed of the attention they deserve. At the time of this writing, I discovered that Danger Zone is the least listened to song from the album, with under 4 million streams on Spotify. Is it my favorite song from the album? No clue, because it's just that damn full of bangers. Virtually every song from this album, minus Long Way To Go, which feels extremely out of place tonally, has spent at least a hot second as my favorite song from here, even the admittedly awful and cringey Harajuku Girls.

So yeah, I frankly love this album! Are there weak points? Sure, Harajuku Girls is weird and Long Way To Go is very out of place. Even on the songs I like, the more r&b and hip-hop songs often feel a bit out of place, not playing to Gwen's strengths or the album's overarching aesthetic as well as the more new wave inspired songs. With that said, surely we have a winning formula, right? More new wave, less hip-hop, right? RIGHT?????

Well... about that...

Here's where the train starts to come off of the rails a bit, The Sweet Escape. Is it bad? Not really. Does it have some great songs, absolutely. Early Winter and The Sweet Escape are great pieces of pop music, and this album has the gorgeous 4 In The Morning, which is a strong contender for my favorite Gwen Stefani song ever, and hands down my favorite ballad she ever created. Even Wind It Up and Yummy are fun and interesting, even if they're weird and don't play to her strengths. But for as many decent songs there are, there are just too few standout moments. Even more, the album never really flows as a body of work, often relying on this herky-jerky hip-hip production courtesy of Pharell that doesn't at all play to Gwen's strengths. So, while there may be a few good songs on the album, as a body of work, it falls pretty flat for me, and doesn't at all deliver on the promise of Love Angel Music Baby in my opinion.

What of the work that came after? I have to be real with you, none of it has inspired me enough to listen to it at length. Am I wrong for that? Maybe. However, one could argue if an artist fails to capture the attention of their previous audience with their new work, maybe that's sometimes a way of the new work's merit demonstrating itself. Not always, but just maybe, at least here.

To tie it all together, Love Angel Music Baby is a great album, and one of the highlight pop albums of the mid-2000s for me personally. Yet, that promise was never really delivered upon in subsequent releases, with Gwen largely abandoning the sound that made this album such a wonderful body of work. Should she be celebrated for creating something that has held up so well? Absolutely. However, I think I will always wonder what we could have had if the creative momentum of this album had been sustained for at least a few years longer.

FUN FACT: Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook from New Order contributed background vocals and bass respectively to The Real Thing.