Gwen Stefani performed at the NRJ Music Awards 2007 over the past weekend (01/20/2007) in France. Here she is on the red carpet:

[via celeb-city]

This interview titled “Escape Artist” was published in the February 2007 issue of Elle. Here’s the full transcript:

Platinum pop star Gwen Stefani talks about her hit addiction, yodeling fantasies, and how she kicked her Madonna habit. Now she prepares to conquer the world, with baby in tow.

You know the story: Blonde Italian-American pop diva, music video emience, and all-round material girl marries a Brit artiste and moves to England. The relationship hits some bumps along the way, but a baby boy ensues and celebrity life keeps rolling. “It is weird that we have all these similarities,” Gwen Stefani allows as she nestles on a couch in one of the many rooms her entourage has taken in London’s Landmark hotel in mid-November. With a voice that hovers somewhere between sultry and Kewpie doll, the singer has a knack for sounding about seven years old: “Madonna’s had us over to dinner and stuff, and she’s always been very nice to me.”

Undeniably, there is a scale to Madge’s assult on the Old Country, everything from the horsey rural estate to the creeping mid-Atlantic accent. Stefani, by contrast, will lose her flat, half-swallowed Californian vowels when hell freezes over, and anyway, she hasn’t even truly relocated to England; she and Brit rocker husband Gavin Rossdale have for the past 10 years split thier time between the house in London’s tony Primrose Hill (neighbors on either side are Jude Law and his ex, Sadie Frost) and a manse in L.A.. But if Madonna does it bigger, it is no longer hersey to suggest that musically, Stefani does it every bit as well. After 17 years of fronting the redoubtable rock/ska/reggae band No Doubt (she should make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the strengh of one immortal break-up tune alone, “Don’t Speak”), Stefani took the solo plunge. Her 2004 giddy confession of dance tunes Love. Angel. Music. Baby. went triple platinum. (”I remember telling Madonna I was going to do an ’80s dance record,” Stefani says, “and she rolled her eyes, because I think when you’ve lived through it like she did, she’s like ‘Whatever.’ But alot of my influences came from her early work, like directly, like a Xerox.”) That album spawned one monster single, “Hollaback Girl,” a saucy cheerleader chant that taught teenage girls how to spell the word bananas and simultaneously established Stefani’s urban street cred as a white suburban rapper comfortable with the “S” word and with pop-hop notables the Neptunes’ marital beats.

“Gwen was always dope,” says Pharrell Williams, producer and one half of the Neptunes. “If there was an ill black record out there, she knew what is was.”

Linda Perry, the songwriter-producer who made Pink into Pink, says she barged her way onto the Stefani solo team by physically accosting the singer at the Grammy awards in 2004. “I was pokin’ her on the head,” Perry says, “and I was like, ‘Dude, you gotta give me a call for the new record.”

Just last week, Stefani put the finishing touches on her new solo album, The Sweet Escape, which, if industry buzz and early radio play can be trusted, is poised to make a major impact. Less self-consciously retro than it’s prodecessor, The Sweet Escape employs the same working method as L.A.M.B.; Lock Gwen up in the studio with a blurry succession of dream-team producers all vying for that one megahit (can you spell bananas?), tape everything, toss it up in the air, and see what sticks. A likely recipe for disaster (which No Doubt purists, partial to human beings playing actual drums and bass, may well judge), but it works, mostly due to Stefani’s feckless, reckless impulse to try anything that pops into her head. Nothing is more out there than the album’s first single and video, “Wind It Up” — typically sinister Neptunes beats and Stefani, backed by a symphony orchestra, singing fragments lifted from The Sound of Music’s “The Lonely Goatherd.” (Yes, that’s right: “High on the hill was the lonley goatherd/ Lay, odl ay odl ay hee hoo.”)

“Some people are freaked out by that yodel,” Stefani confides. “Either people get it or they don’t. But I’ve always had the fantasy of putting The Sound of Music to a beat. I used to quote all the songs like a geek!” (Pharrell, a famous musical minimalist, was less than convinced, but he tells me later, “I just rolled with her. I wanted her to be happy.”) Stefani’s term of art for a tune like “Wind It Up” is a “mash-up,” but, if you wanted to go all High Culture on Gwen, Dada would do as well. Marcel Duchamp has nothing on Stefani, whose brain is as adhesive as flypaper, a trap for pop-culture fragments that almost randomly catch and reassemble.

In her own mind, Gwen Stefani is the Cinderella of pop music. At any moment, it seems, the Landmark could turn into a pumpkin. “The hotel maid walked by today,” she says, “and she’s really pretty and she probably comes from Poland. And here I am about to spend alot of money on room service and I was thinking, I could have been a maid.” Actually, Stefani grew up solidly middle-class in Anaheim, the second of four kids in a tight-knit family headed by folk-music-loving parents (dad Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive; Patti was an accountant before becoming a full time mom.) Teenage Gwen was mad for clothes and jumped-up Jamaican-rooted ska music, then enjoying one of it’s periodic rivals. In 1987, her older brother, Eric, formed No Doubt and persuaded his bopping little sister to sing in the band and that, aside from a little college on the fly, would be her life; near-constant touring and a steady romance with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal. The Cinderella theme kicked in big time with No Doubt’s hit third album, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom (Anaheim being home to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, after all), which transformed the Southern California party band into a pop/rock juggernaut. By then, Tony and Gwen had broken up (providing the raw material for “Don’t Speak) and Eric had decamped to become and animator with The Simpsons. But the band chugged on through 2001’s Rock Steady, by which all four No Doubt members were desperate for a break. (Kanal has since emerged as one of Stefani’s trusted solo collaborators.) As as to whether the success of solo Gwen means the end of No Doubt, Stefani says she hopes not: “I’m looking forward to going back to my little musical family and trying to write a song,” she says. But for the tween girls who are the core of her solo fan base, No Doubt, much beloved by young men, would fall squarely into the “No clue” department.

With hubby Rossdale in L.A. recording with Pharrell, Stefani has turned over the London Primrose Hill house to her parents, visiting from Anaheim and eager, like the rest of the inner circle, to get some quality time with thier six-month old grandson, Kingston. (”He’s pretty rad,” Kingston’s mom says.) For nine days, Stefani has moved in the Landmark with a small army of publicits and managers, transforming one of the city’s swankiest hotels into a field headquarters for the campaign of a global publicity push behind The Sweet Escape.

“I’m so exhausted,” Stefani announces as she walks into her personal assistant’s hotel room. But just because Cinderella is in a mood doesn’t mean she’s a diva. (”The ghastly thing about her is that she is a really decent human being,” says her pal Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson.) Fame and talent aside, Stefani is the mall girl next door, one who’s very in touch with her emotions. When she’s up, she’s up, when she’s down, she cries easily, and she’s particularly sensitive in matters of personal appearance. Trailed from city to city by a retinue of hair and skin and clothes handlers who have become her intimate friends. (”They are as obessive as I am and complete mad hatters,” Stefani says), she is still the last word on her high-glam platinum persona that evolved over a decade and a half’s worth of music videos. Today, and all-day photo shoot for another project has let her down. “I started with my hard look–my bangs–but the lighting was like Kmart–’Attention shoppers!’–so I had to revise.”

Post-photo-shoot debacle, Stefani has changed into a soothingly rich green tracksuit with the logo of her clothing line, L.A.M.B., running down one side in fancy gold script letters, (She has also launched a teen-friendly line, Harajuku Lovers, her homage to the style-conscious Tokyo girls who hang out in the Harajuku shopping district.) “People always say the same things,” she tells me. “That I’m smaller than they expected and that I look better in real like. Which is kind of a back-handed compliment.”

True enough. The early No Doubt Gwen, the adorable ska kid with a little baby fat, has been updated into a striking 37-year-old woman with angular features and a trim, honed physique. And then there’s the hair, which serves as a kind of Stefani mood ring, never more dramatically than in 2000 when she broke up with Rossdale (temporarily) and opted for the startling pink do that graced the cover of No Doubt’s Return of Saturn. She’s since gone back to Jean Harlow platinum, and over-the-top shade that can be seen to good effect in Martin Scorseses’ The Aviator, Stefani’s chance to play her Hollywood avatar for about three minutes of screen time, hanging off the arm of Leo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes, (The movie experiences seems to have slacked her once-ardent film ambitions, but she says, “If Martin Scorsese called me again…”)

Hair color notwithstanding, the past four years have been anything but a cakewalk. After her 2002 marriage to her English rocker, she learned that Rossdale had fathered an illegitimate child, now a teenager, Stefani’s lyrics tend to read like blog entries from her own tumultuous Planet Relationship, so fans interpreted “Danger Zone,” off her first album, as a stinging retort: “Are your secrets where you’ve left them?/ Cause now your ghosts are mine as well.” (In this instance, the fans were wrong; the song was written before the revelation, but Stefani would be shocked by it’s prophetic resonance.)

As for the new album’s gorgeously bleak ballad “Early Winter” (”I can’t fix what you broke”), it turns out Tim Rice-Oxley from the band Keane wrote most of the lyrics and, by all accounts, Stefani and Rossdale are in a positive phase of the moon, thank you very much.) “But [that song] felt weird,” she says. “It felt like I could have lived it and I have lived it. I mean, of course me and Gavin have problems, sometimes. Everyone does. We’ve been together for over 10 years. This is, like, the real deal.” (For more on loving your man in spite of it all, consult “The Real Thing” off L.A.M.B.)

In any event, she adds, it’s not like she’s going into the studio these days expressly for emotional catharis. “I’ll never be as pure as I was when I wrote Tragic Kingdom,” she says. “Once you’ve had a hit, there’s no going back, because it’s so addictive. It’s a drug. I felt I was going back and getting more Pharrell, ‘Hollaback Girl Number 2.’” She giggles. “As you would! It’s not like being ambitious is a bad thing. And I wanted [this album] to be now, to be modern. I want it to be in the clubs. No Doubt was never in the clubs. I want to go out and hear that song pumping in the car next to me. I want bass! I want bump!”

Room service knocks and our tea arrives. “This is perfection,” Stefani says. She may be getting the hang of the England thing after all.

The next day I follow Stefani to the KISS radio station to watch her make nice over the English airwaves. It’s an entourage production, but in addition to the usual handlers we get an appearance by the beguiling Kingston Rossdale, who holds court in the waiting lounge under the watchful eyes of his grandparents. “Kingston is so chill,” Stefani says. “He goes with me everywhere, ’cause I’m still nursing. He’s been to every studio in L.A., New York, London. He gives me real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him.” According to Manson, Stefani functions baffingly well at top speed. “Sometimes you hang out with her and she says ‘Oh God, I had two hours of sleep last night. I was in the studio until 4 A.M. and then up with the baby at 6. Then she throws a big party at night.”

If motherhood is sweet, the pregnancy proved to be an unexpected bitch. “I thought I was going to be one of those Mother Nature girls. I figured, I’ll just squeeze it out,” she says, “’cause I’m really strong and I work out and stuff.” Instead, shortness of breath and a host of other physical ills made the latter part of her L.A.M.B. tour a nightmare. “I would be seriously crying before I went onstage. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the tour, putting on nince costume changes on a stage in front of 12,000 people every night. And I didn’t want people to know [I was pregnant]. I didn’t want it to become the Gwen Freak Circus Show– ‘Watch it grow onstage.’”

Tonight, gearing up for her Sweet Escape tour, Stefani is looking the furthest thing from maternal, in a skintight sweater and clunky neck chain that I assume is a garden -variety hip-hop bling until she sets me straight. It’s a key, she says, formed by two back-to-back G’s, her “Wind It Up” key that’s featured prominently in the video with yodelling and the lonely goatherd and an allusively related Houdini subplot with a struggling Stefani shackled to a chain fence as if underwater. “In the video,” she says, “you can see the key coming out of my mouth. When Houdini used to do his tricks, his wife used to pass the key from her mouth to his mouth. It’s the sweet escape. And I was thinking, The key is the music. It all kind of ties up together.”

Whatever (as Stefani would say), it makes for a cool video. Her new fans are happy to follow her into the wooliest recesses of her imagination, entranced by the fabulous artifice, by the playful tug-of-war between her Jean Harlow and abs-of-steal personas, and by the evident fact that you can be a mega-pop star without the standard issue T & A pander (especially about a zillion preteen girls who take thier uncomplaining dads to her concerts.) Something about Gwen Stefani seems to reconcile opposites–humble celebrity, femme jock, surrealist material girl–and has ever since the early No Doubt days when she was the girl in the guys’ band touring the rock dives of America in a van. “I would ‘go off’ in the mosh pit,” she says, “but I was always very glamorous before I dove in.”

I’m starting to think The Sweet Escape is a grower. Like some kind of fluorescent fungi. At first I really did not like it, but now I’m coming around.
Except I will probably never come around to Orange County Girl. Because Gwen already had her “I’m still the same girl I always was” moment in Hey Baby, and that’s ten times the song Orange County Girl is. And does not include the lyric “I wanna skank some more”.

The long awaited video for Gwen Stefani’s “Sweet Escape” is finally out and is being premiered on Yahoo! Music Videos. At some point it also appeared on YouTube but was quickly removed due to “content was used without permission”.

Check out the video here.

TMZ’s camera followed Gwen while leaving the Mexican restaurant Casa Vega. She entered the cars back seat with baby Kingston on her lap, and in the last moment, placed Kingston in the car seat right before the car took off…

In a recent interview for USA Today, Gwen Stefani opened up about some of the more personal secrets in life.

On more babies: “I pray that I can have another baby,” Stefani, 37, tells USA Today. “I mean, it’s such a miracle to have one. And there’s so much I still want to do, because who knows? Things could be a lot harder a few years from now. I mean, I’m not at the beginning of my career. I’m on a ticking clock. And I don’t want to miss anything.”

On breastfeeding: “I’m still nursing. I think it gives you superhuman powers.”

On baby Kingston: “There’s this huge team of us always hanging out together, so he gets to see the same people every day,” Stefani says of her entourage of stylists, dancers and others. “And he’s this very cool, chilled-out little guy. He’s just like another person, except that he’s super-cute and super-entertaining.”

Gwen Stefani, while on a break from shows spends some time with Kingston in NYC on 12.12.2006.

Gwen Stefani was on last night’s Saturday Night Live, and san this yodel-rap mashup. Aside from the entertaining aspect of the song, I can’t see this song doing much… Sorry.

Waiting impatintly for that good-old NoDoubt girl.

Gwen Stfani signed a global licensing deal with Coty for a complete line of fragrances for her brand L.A.M.B. The first project, an as-yet-unnamed women’s fragrance, is planned for fall 2007.

[via WWD]

Gwen Stefani’s new album ‘The Sweet Escape‘ is officially out today and alog with that she sent out an official release newsletter to all subscribers.

From the newsletter:

THE SWEET ESCAPE IS HERE!
Gwen’s second album, The Sweet Escape, hits stores this week in North America and Europe. Hopefully by now you’ve heard the first single, The Neptunes-produced "Wind It Up," - the current #1 video on MTV. Other contributors to the album include Akon, Tony Kanal, Nellee Hooper, Sean Garrett, Swizz Beatz and Keane¹s Tim Rice-Oxley. A concert DVD, Harajuku Lovers Live, will be simultaneously released. The DVD features a full concert performance shot last year in Gwen’s hometown of Anaheim, CA, includes 2 new songs and is packed with bonus features and footage.

WATCH FOR GWEN ON YOUR TV:
Dec 4 - Billboard Music Awards performance, FOX 8:00 PM Eastern/Pacific
Dec 9 - Saturday Night Live performance, NBC 11:30 PM Eastern/Pacific
Dec 11 - MTV TRL interview & performance, 3:30 PM Eastern/Pacific
Dec 12 - ABC Good Morning America performance
Dec 12 - Late Show with David Letterman performance, CBS 11:30 PM Eastern/Pacific
Dec 31 MTV New Year’s Eve performance, 10:00 PM Eastern/Pacific

MARK YOUR CALENDARS:
The 2007 The Sweet Escape world tour begins this April in North America.
The official tour dates are listed below. Shows will begin to go on-sale
this February, specific ticket on-sale information will be announced on
gwenstefani.com as soon as it becomes available.

Apr-21 Phoenix, AZ - Cricket Pavilion
Apr-22 San Diego, CA - Coors Amphitheatre
Apr-24 Fresno, CA - Save Mart Center
Apr-25 Bakersfield, CA - Rabobank Arena
Apr-28 Las Vegas, NV - MGM Grand Garden Arena
Apr-30 Salt Lake City, UT - The "E" Center
May-02 Denver, CO - Pepsi Center
May-03 Albuquerque, NM - Journal Pavilion
May-05 Dallas, TX - Smirnoff Music Centre
May-06 Houston, TX - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
May-08 Tampa, FL - Ford Amphitheatre
May-09 West Palm Beach, FL - Sound Advice Amphitheatre
May-11 Atlanta, GA - HiFi Buys Amphitheatre
May-12 Charlotte, NC - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
May-14 Raleigh, NC - Alltel Pavilion
May-15 Virginia Beach, VA - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
May-17 Washington DC - Nissan Pavilion
May-18 Holmdel, NJ - PNC Bank Arts Center
May-20 Wantagh, NY - Nikon at Jones Beach Theatre
May-21 Uncasville, CT - Mohegan Sun Arena
May-23 Boston, MA - Tweeter Center
May-24 Philadelphia, PA - Tweeter Center at The Waterfront
May-26 Atlantic City, NJ - Borgata Hotel and Casino
May-27 Pittsburgh, PA - Post-Gazette Pavilion
May-29 Montreal, CAN - Bell Centre
May-30 Toronto, CAN - Air Canada Centre
Jun-01 Detroit, MI - Palace of Auburn Hills
Jun-02 Indianapolis, IN - Verizon Wireless Music Center
Jun-04 Omaha, NE - Qwest Center
Jun-05 St. Paul, MN - Xcel Energy Center
Jun-07 Milwaukee, WI - Bradley Center
Jun-08 Chicago, IL - First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Jun-10 Winnipeg, CAN - MTS Centre
Jun-12 Edmonton, CAN - Rexall Place
Jun-13 Calgary, CAN - Pengrowth Saddledome
Jun-15 Vancouver, CAN - General Motors Place
Jun-16 Seattle, WA - White River Amphitheatre
Jun-18 Sacramento, CA - Sleep Train Amphitheatre
Jun-19 San Francisco, CA - Shoreline Amphitheatre
Jun-22 Irvine, CA - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre

** International fans, look for Central America, South America, Australia,
Asia and Europe tour dates to be announced in 2007.

Don’t forget to visit gwenstefani.com for the latest Gwen news, behind the
scenes videos, photos, Q&As and more exclusive content.

Thank you.

Gwenstefani.com

Tags: Gwen Stefani