Gwen Stefani returns to Genius to break down her hit record, “What You Waiting For?” The Nellee Hooper produced track was the lead single from her debut album, 'Love. Angel.' Music. Baby. On today’s episode of Verified, the pop icon reflects on writing for the first time, the guilt of leaving her band, the origins of her love for Harajuku culture, and more!
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00:00I think what's so cool about this song really is the depth of what it says is so kind of deep.
00:06It's dressed up in this little punky, weird, quirky music.
00:10And it's the first song I wrote and I was like, that's the first single.
00:12And I think that everybody felt like,
00:14you're a little bit out of your mind because that's not really what we were thinking your
00:18solo record was going to sound like.
00:20They were hoping I was going to be like a little more, I don't know, consumable.
00:24For me, it was like plain and clear.
00:27I don't care if it doesn't even get on the radio.
00:30This is the song that starts this journey because this is the truth.
00:39This was a really special time in my life.
00:42After being in No Doubt all those years and having the opportunity to play
00:47and not have to think about any limits, I felt like in my mind I was doing a dance
00:52record that wouldn't really count.
00:53It was just going to be my guilty pleasure, something I could do.
00:56No one would judge me.
00:58It was just for fun.
00:59And I think that freedom was super exciting for me at that point in my life.
01:04And when I went in to write this song, it was the first song I wrote outside of the band.
01:09And I was working with Linda Perry and she was, at that time, on top of the world.
01:13She had just done Christina's song, Beautiful.
01:16She was the big it writer to write with.
01:19I didn't even know about writers.
01:20I was just in my band.
01:21I didn't even know there was these fancy writers you could go write with.
01:24And I remember I got in the room with her.
01:25I was being really insecure.
01:27I was like, I want to do this, but I don't know how to do this.
01:30Like, what?
01:31And she just looked at me.
01:32She goes, what are you waiting for?
01:34I hopped on the mic and it was like, like I get it, it's okay, I love it.
01:38It was just, boop.
01:48I wanted to do something that felt very theatrical, with zero limits.
01:53So the idea of setting the tone of what was happening, which was there was a guilt behind
01:59the fact that I was going and leaving my band behind.
02:03Something I never thought I could, would do.
02:05And in that moment, I just wanted to recognize that that was an amazing thing.
02:10But here we go to the next chapter.
02:17Everything about time has always been on my mind a lot.
02:22And I write about that.
02:23This was like 20 years ago.
02:24And I'm writing about, worried about my time's going to run out.
02:27My time's going to run out.
02:28I just kind of was inspired by the idea of this rabbit hole.
02:32I was going to dive in and just like Alice in Wonderland, anything was going to happen.
02:37I feel like growing up in Orange County, Disneyland, that was the backdrop of my childhood.
02:43Those fantasy worlds were really ingrained in me.
02:47I was trying to express what it felt like to be emotionally held back by my guilt of
02:53leaving the band to do something else.
02:55I couldn't stop myself.
02:57I needed to do it.
02:58I think that that was a perfect way to describe the way I felt, which is like, if a cat's
03:03in heat, you can't really stop them from going outside.
03:06They'll just growl and go.
03:08And they hate being in the car, and they hate being stuck.
03:13I think I felt like I just was bursting with this music in me, and I knew I needed to go
03:18get it.
03:19And that was a perfect way to describe it.
03:29I was definitely having an inner dialogue.
03:31It was like, no, you need to do this.
03:33But wait, what if they say that you're trying to climb and everyone's going to judge you?
03:38You're trying to be like a whatever.
03:40Everyone's going to judge you like you're trying to be like a solo star.
03:44You're in a band.
03:45It was definitely an inner voice.
03:47It was definitely a dialogue that I was having just out loud for everyone to hear.
04:01There was just something in me that knew that there was more if I could just be free.
04:05I just needed to grow up a little bit, you know what I mean?
04:08I had done what I had done for a long, long, long, long time before anyone ever saw it.
04:13It was just time.
04:20Listen, guys, what inspired Take A Chance, You Stupid Ho?
04:24Well, I think at that time in the early 2000s, that was a really common way that we would
04:30kind of love each other, especially girl to girl.
04:34If you saw your girls, it was common language to be like, what's up, ho?
04:38It was like dissing at the same time, but loving at the same time.
04:41I'm saying it in a loving way.
04:43And I think I kind of was saying that to myself.
04:45Don't be a dummy.
04:47Get yourself together.
04:48Take a chance, you stupid ho, like in a loving hug kind of way.
04:51You can do this.
04:53I don't know where the born to blossom, bloom to perish came from.
04:58Such a beautiful metaphor to life and how I felt as a woman.
05:02At that point, I don't remember how old I was, but I was in my 30s and I felt old and
05:08I felt like I had already blossomed.
05:10How could anyone care about me anymore?
05:12This is what I was.
05:12I'm not gonna lie.
05:13I was just a woman.
05:14I was a woman.
05:15I was a woman.
05:15I was a woman.
05:16I was a woman.
05:17I was a woman.
05:17I was a woman.
05:18I was a woman.
05:19I was a woman.
05:19I was a woman.
05:20I was a woman.
05:20I was a woman.
05:21I was a woman.
05:21I was a woman.
05:22This is what happens to us as we grow older.
05:25We don't know it until we're there, what it's gonna feel like.
05:28Where did that come from?
05:29Because I couldn't think of something that beautiful, right?
05:31So I always just say that was, again, a miracle.
05:35And you know that lyric has been tattooed on so many people.
05:39That's the one tattoo that I approve of.
05:41I was like, yeah, wherever you want it, tattoo it.
05:44It's so beautiful.
05:52It was like I was in my 30s and you start to really start feeling it.
05:59Like you're like, wow, what is 30?
06:01That's crazy.
06:02Like you just feel like it's gonna be over.
06:04Even though now I'm forwarded into the future again.
06:07And that looked like I was so young.
06:09And everybody will say the same thing because that's just life.
06:12We're going through life.
06:13It's a test at the whole time.
06:15I just wanted to explain like to myself, just because you're a female
06:20and you have this outer version of you that's temporary and always going to be changing.
06:26Like you're still alive.
06:28Like you still need to exist.
06:29You still need to produce things.
06:30You still need to have a place.
06:32And sometimes I think that in society, you can feel like they just want to put you out
06:37into the pasture like you're done.
06:39So I think that inner voice was like me trying to convince myself like, you're still hot.
06:43You can still do this.
06:44And it's really just an inner dialogue looking around me and what I felt like at that time.
06:51Look at your watch now.
06:52You're still a super hot female.
06:55You got your million dollar contract.
06:57And they're all waiting for your hot track.
06:59I'm going back and forth between like we all do to ourselves.
07:02Like you're disgusting.
07:03And then the other side, it's like, actually, no, it's too bad.
07:06Like if you get the right lighting, like it's fine.
07:08Like, you know, we lie to ourselves all day long.
07:10And it's just such a unbelievable conversation that we have in our minds.
07:15Looking at that conversation and putting it into the microphone.
07:18Because the way that we wrote this was like, we would just go on the mic and just like freestyle.
07:23I would go back home and sort of pick it all out with these weird melodies that we came
07:28up with together.
07:29And so I was just struggling with the confidence to be able to say, I want to do this so bad.
07:34But then that devil creature is like trying to like take me down.
07:40I rebuked the devil.
07:42And I'm going to ride off into the sunset and write this music.
07:46And that's what I did.
07:49What you waiting for?
07:51What you waiting for?
07:53What are you waiting for?
07:55What you waiting for was the line that Linda Perry said to me.
07:59And she was very clear.
08:00It was very simple.
08:01She kind of slapped me and woke me up.
08:04Like, stop getting in your own way and just be free and do your thing that you're going to do.
08:08Sometimes you just get in your own way.
08:10You make up all these fake roadblocks of why you're not good enough.
08:13And if you just receive the gift and you use it, it will come through you.
08:16And that's exactly what happened.
08:20I can't wait to go back and do Japan.
08:23Get myself some brand new fans.
08:25Osaka, Tokyo.
08:29You Harajuku girls.
08:30Damn, you've got the wicked style.
08:32When I was a little girl, my dad actually worked for a company called Yamaha Motorcycles,
08:36which is a Japanese company.
08:38So it was a big deal.
08:39Every day at dinner time, he would talk about these crazy meetings he would have.
08:43You could imagine back then, we didn't have internets or nothing like phones.
08:47We just had encyclopedia or National Geographic.
08:53If you wanted to learn about another culture, it was very foreign.
08:56And he would come home from these really long trips to Japan.
09:00And it would be like two, three weeks, and he would open the suitcase and it would be like,
09:03oh my gosh, I got a geisha doll.
09:05I got a Hello Kitty and things that we couldn't get here that were just so different and so beautiful.
09:11And so my fascination with the culture was something that came from a very, very young age.
09:17And he would go and tell me, like, you would freak out.
09:20There's this area called Harajuku where everybody dresses up.
09:23There's Elvis's.
09:24There's this.
09:24He would tell me all the details.
09:26And this was like 15 years before I ever even got to go to Japan,
09:29which I never in my lifetime thought I'd get to go.
09:32And so when I got to go to Japan in the 90s and I landed and I went to Harajuku,
09:37the place I had heard about, I just was like a kid in a candy store.
09:40I was like, oh my gosh, this is it.
09:41I've been told about this my whole life.
09:43Like, this is insane.
09:44So for me, it was just like a weird full circle thing.
09:47And when I wrote that line, it was like me telling myself, well,
09:51if you do this, you're going to get a treat.
09:53You're going to get to go back there again.
09:57You look back on it and you think, wow, like it was kind of ahead of its time in a weird way
10:02because I feel like now people are discovering that song for what it really is.
10:06What's getting in your way?
10:07It's actually a self-anthem, you know,
10:09and a way to like talk yourself into whatever you need to do next in your life.