Charity Shop Album #3: Love. Angel. Music. Baby. by Gwen Stefani

The One Where We Finally Learn How To Spell ‘Bananas’.

Jul 10, 2025

If I was a rich girl,

(na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na)

I would buy all the 2000’s CDs in the world, if I was a wealthy gir-ir-ir-irl 🎶

HELLO and welcome to the longest email you may ever read! I’m back with another Charity Shop Album Review, where I go into a secondhand store, pick out a CD for my bedazzled CD player, and talk about what I hear.

Want to see what my other reviews are like? Check out the first two Charity Shop Album Reviews on my Substack.

This week’s album was actually a part of my teenage CD collection.

Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (also known as L.A.M.B.) was released on my 13th birthday. It was Gwen Stefani’s first solo album, after her band No Doubt broke up in 2004.

Described by critics as “stranger and often more entertaining than nearly any other mainstream pop album of 2004,"1 and “trashy, hedonistic and deeply weird,”2 let’s take a listen and see how it holds up, 20 years since its release.

Queue it up on Youtube, Spotify, or wherever you like, and let’s get stuck in.

Track 1: What You Waiting For?

There is a cohort of women out there who were in their early teens when this song was released. We blasted it on our walkmans and CD players.

As teenagers we daydreamed of being grown-ups: making adult friendships, buying makeup, living in an apartment, being married or having a live-in partner, driving cars. That phase of life— the one yet to begin— seemed expansive and endless. We never seasoned these daydreams with anxiety about age, time, career, or the pressure of ‘making something’ of yourself. It wasn’t even on our radar.

Now that we’re in our early thirties (Gwen was 35 when she co-wrote this song), this song hits different. Speaking for myself: I didn’t realise that listening to this track as a 33-year-old woman would give me such a jolt of recognition.

I feel the sentiment of this song in my gut.

‘Take a chance you stupid hoe’ is basically some version of what I say to myself in my head every day.

LOOK AT YOUR WATCH NOW! YOU’RE STILL A SUPER-HOT FEMALE!

You’re young, but not for much longer. You’re hot, but not for much longer. You’re in demand, but who knows for how much longer.

It’s the anxiety of having to take every opportunity and maximise it while you’ve still ‘got it’.

It’s the desire to cash in on your looks, your energy, your time, your baby-less-ness, your relevancy, because it could all be gone tomorrow.

But on the opposite side of the boxing ring is your other nemesis: total paralysis.

You know it off by heart why are you standing in one place?

I read something the other day that said the moment we attach our identity to a project we want to complete, it becomes impossible to work on. Because our egos are now entangled with the success/failure of the thing. Our own ambition leaves us paralysed.

‘What You Waiting For’ is a pop anthem for the push-pull, the tick-tock, the red & blue corners in your brain all sparring at once.

Also, Marina needs to cover this if she hasn’t already. Oh wait she already did. Cool.

VERDICT: Bop! bop bop bop!!! I love the sound of this song. It fucking slaps. And then it ends with a gong. Last time I heard that was in Bohemian Rhapsody. Bring that back.

Track 2: Rich Girl

Never did I think someone could take a song from… [checks notes] Fiddler on the Roof, and turn it into a pop song. But here we are.

If we are still in the market to interpolate unlikely songs from musicals into pop music, let me suggest:

‘Memory’ from Cats (I’m thinking a trance revival)
‘Confrontation’ from Jekyll and Hyde (????? let’s workshop it)
‘Ya Got Trouble’ from The Music Man (this one would go hard I think)
‘Kansas City’ from Oklahoma! (could be quite topical)
‘There Is Nothing Like A Dame’ from South Pacific (only the lines by the giant guy in a crop top. If Stewpot has no fans I am dead)

Now… we get to the part where the Harajuku Girls are introduced.

The Harajuku Girls were four dancers (Jennifer Kita, Rino Nakasone, Mayuko Kitayama, and Maya Chino) that Stefani employed for the rollout of L.A.M.B. Three of them had just finished working on Britney Spears’ Onyx Hotel tour, and after this stint with Gwen Stefani most of them continued working with big names such as Madonna and Ricky Martin. Rino Nakasone actually went on to do a lot of work in the K-pop world, directing choreography for super-famous groups such as Shinee and Girls Generation.

As the Harajuku Girls, they performed with Stefani live, accompanied her to press events etc, and were always dressed in matching outfits. Each of them had a stage name correlating with the title of the album: one called Love, one called Angel, and so on.

Gwen Stefani Says Her "Harajuku Girls" Era Wasn't Cultural Appropriation

This didn’t bat many eyelashes back in the early aughts (some people did, but overall the general public wasn’t hip to the concept of cultural appropriation then), but when you look back now, it’s glaringly obvious. The women were dancers, but the way they were dressed up and touted around as Stefani’s wordless entourage made them seem more like props.

Stefani’s references to them in her songs didn’t improve matters.

In ‘Rich Girl’, she sings:

I'd get me four Harajuku girls to
Inspire me, and they'd come to my rescue
I'd dress them wicked, I'd give them names

This is the bit that makes my skin crawl. I know we’re all hee-hee and ha-ha on this newsletter but it would be WILD to talk about this album without mentioning the cultural appropriation that went hand-in-hand with it.

Gwen stated again and again that this aspect of this album was an homage to Japanese culture and specifically the fashion, but having four mute dancers follow her everywhere just perpetuated racist stereotypes about East Asian women. And this lyric in particular about bestowing outfits and names on them… ugh. No matter the amount of ‘appreciation’ you have for a culture, you can’t reduce people to their nationality/race and then present them as playthings.

Comedian Margaret Cho said of the Harajuku Girls in 2005, “I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can… I don’t want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show.”

I’m sure if this had happened in 2025, she wouldn’t have felt the need to choose her words so carefully.

VERDICT: Despite the Harajuku Girls line — and don’t worry, the Harajuku Girls get a whole song later in the album— this song will crawl into your head, set up camp, and STAY THERE. It is, for better or worse, a bop.

Track 3: Hollaback Girl

Being a thirteen-year-old girl when this was released meant that this song was absolutely legendary in our form classroom. Mainly because we loved the amount of times that she said “shit” in the song. I barely ever swore at this age (insert baby angel emoji here) but one time I told a girl to ‘fuck off’ during breaktime at school which made me instantly cool for the day with the popular girls. This song may have given me the impetus to do so. It was my Hollaback Girl moment!

There’s hardly any instrumentation apart from an 808-type stomp/clap beat and some brassy synth swells and stabs. This basically makes this song the ‘We Will Rock You’ of 2004.

Iconic pop culture moment: The One Where We Finally Learn How To Spell ‘Bananas’.

Perhaps one of the most punchy spelling interludes in a pop song, sitting just above ‘Lola’ by the Kinks, and below ‘Glamorous’ by Fergie. If you’re asking, ‘ME!’ by Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie does NOT qualify because even though they say ‘hey kids, spelling is fun!’ they just launch into some ‘girl there is no I in team, but there is a me in wee!’ bullshit so actually they did no spelling at all (I am writing this without listening to the track because my ‘ME!’ quota is already full since I have listened to it once in the last 3 years).

VERDICT: This song is a bop. B-o-p-o-p-o-p!

Track 4: Cool

This track was the fourth and final single off the album, and has actually had a resurgence in popularity lately. Just the other day I saw someone write a breakdown of the looks in the music video for this song.

‘Cool’ was originally written by songwriter Dallas Austin with Christina Aguilera in mind. When he presented it to Gwen, she was inspired to write about her relationship and split with No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal… their breakup led to one of No Doubt’s biggest songs, ‘Don’t Speak.’

‘Cool’ is about riding that romantic rollercoaster with someone and coming out the other side.

And after all the obstacles
It's good to see you now with someone else
And it's such a miracle that
You and me are still good friends

I love songs about this kind of sentiment. Need more songs about being chill about your ex and not ready launch yourself out of a window whenever they walk into a room.

brb pouring one out for my first boyfriend who I thought I was going to marry and have 9 dogs with.

C-Cool!

VERDICT: Love it. BOP.

Track 5: Bubble Pop Electric

OKAY. this song has DIALOGUE inside of it! It has FOLEY! Call in Harold Pinter cause we gettin’ a PLAY!

I love songs with exposition like this. The setting? Friday night in Teenage Americana Milkshake Land. Two lusty teens meet up for a drive-in movie.

We have the character of GWEN.

We have the character of JOHNNY. Who I imagine would look like this:

Grease T Bird Jacket Adult Fancy Dress Costume — “yeah! tell ya fatha, I said EL-LO!”

And TONIGHT. They are going to get FREAKY. In the BACKSEAT.

This song was produced by Nellee Hooper who did the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack which made me cry a lot when I first watched it at the age of 14. He also produced for Bjork and Massive Attack.

Anyway I assume it was Nellee’s choice to include a constant rippling popping sound (the bubblegum? the electricity?) which sometimes gets a bit farty when it hits a certain frequency. It is such a crazy decision to have it literally throughout the ENTIRE SONG and once you notice it you wonder why it hasn’t given you a panic attack yet. But it works. This is why Nellee Hooper is Nellee Hooper. We salute you, Hoops. 🫡

Also the best lyric in this song is ‘The Queen of Eng’ would say it… randy’ because the late Queen of “Eng” would have literally never said that.

VERDICT: I love this one. Fart sounds and Johnny’s dialogue put the cherry on top. RANDY. BOP.

Track 6: Luxurious

I have just been full-on Mandela-Bernstein-Bear’ed by this song because… IT HAS FRENCH AT THE BEGINNING OF IT?

I have heard this song multiple times (as I said, I owned this album), and I have never. Literally never. Heard a dude speaking French at the beginning of it.

Googled what he was saying:

It's not possible, this love
It was incredible
You make me sweat
It's perfect

Okay.

But overall, this song just kind of limps around for me. Doesn’t go anywhere. There’s a lot of mentions about champagne and Egyptian cotton.

VERDICT: Kind of boring. FLOP.

Track 7: Harajuku Girls

Gwen, we get it. YOU READ FRUiTS MAGAZINE!!!

FRUiTs magazine was a Japanese monthly street fashion magazine founded in 1997 by photographer Shoichi Aoki, which ended in 2017 when, according to Aoki, "there were no more cool kids to photograph." Ouch!

Personally I love learning about other countries and cultures. Travel and art and music and fashion is fun! Would love to go to Japan. HOWEVER. I could have a literal transcendental experience on the streets of Harajuku and I would still never end up writing this song.

The problem with ‘Harajuku Girls’ stems out beyond the song and into Gwen’s whole assumption of Japanese culture in this era. Even Slate mag wrote at the time that her "obsession with Harajuku girls borders on maniacal.”

In a pedestrian paradise, where the catwalk got its claws. Meeeeoooow!

The irony here is that Gwen de-clawed this catwalk. Her Harajuku Girls aren’t really representative of Harajuku or the subcultures of fashion that exist there. It’s just some Westernized, rando-amalgamation of Japanese signifiers (Kanzashi headpieces and schoolgirl uniforms… yeah).

Mihi Ahn wrote for Salon, in 2005: “she’s swallowed a subversive youth culture in Japan and barfed up another image of submissive giggling Asian women.”3

This kind of shit happens in Western music all the time, where non-white people or non-Western locations are used as a 2D background for white artists’ emotional expression. Once you notice it somewhere you will start seeing it elsewhere, particularly with East Asian people and places. How many songs can you think of about being lost and lonely in Japan?

At least get a Japanese pop star to feature on this track, this album doesn’t shy away from features at all. I was listening to Koda Kumi’s Cutie Honey on repeat in 2004!

VERDICT: The production in this song is so interesting. There’s loads going on sonically, little details here and there which really make it a cool track. But the topic of this song is so fucking RIDICULOUS it’s literally uncomfortable so for that reason the panel (me) will be giving this a FLOP.

Track 8: Crash

We’re really entering Side 2 of this album now. In these final 5 tracks of L.A.M.B., you’ll a heavyyy emphasis on a 1980’s sound, and, finally, some respite from the constant Harajuku Girls mentions. Phew.

My friend Aisling and I had this fantasy that we would walk into our school disco in leather jackets and sunglasses to ‘Crash’. And then whip our sunglasses off in sync. And then probably some pubescent boy with a bowl cut would knee-slide towards us and be like “my mate fancies you” before running off to chase a balloon.

Also there’s a great moment when the backing vocals sing 🎵~FREEBASEEEERRR!🎵 I did not know what freebasing was, and for so long I thought it was base-jumping. Not that, apparently. Not that.

VERDICT: BOP.

Track 9: Real Thing

This could be a Madonna or Kylie track from the 80’s. I really like it. No more commentary needed!

VERDICT: Bop!

Track 10: Serious

Leaning harder and harder into the eighties sounds here. Side note: does anyone remember the first-wave 80’s revival of the early 2000’s? Especially in terms of fashion? Neon! Denim! Velour tracksuits! Purple eyeshadow! It definitely happened but when I google it there’s hardly any recognition of it on the internet.

As you can tell by the dwindling sentences in this later half of this album, I have less and less to say about these songs. They are fine, they’re just… fine. No grand statements are made in any of these songs, whether in the lyrics or the production.

VERDICT: bop… but borderline bop.

Track 11: Danger Zone

In an interview, Gwen expressly said that she didn’t want any of the songs on this album to be about her life (with the unintended exception of ‘Cool’). So what we get instead is a lot of songs which are just dancey-poppy-floor-fillers. Including this one.

It’s funny because in this post-Swift age, I feel like a lot of fans scour through artists’ new releases to glean what they can about popstar’s personal affairs. Are songs any less valuable if we can’t trace them back to a genuine emotion or lived experience from the person who’s singing them?

The melody in the bridge here echoes the verse in ‘Cool,’ which is… cool! But overall, this song is kind of about nothing. To me at least. For all that harping on about “the danger zone,” there’s actually no risks being taken in this track, at least nothing substantial compared to the production we hear in the first half of the album.

VERDICT: Meh. FLOP

Track 12: Long Way To Go

After a few filler tracks, we finally round the album off with something I can get my teeth into.

I rate this song. It’s one of those albums tracks which rubs you the wrong way at first, but after several listens, you end up looking forward to it.

Plus, an André 3000 feature!

‘Long Way To Go’ is about mixed-race relationships and the external prejudices you face when you’re in one. Funny, because “we’ve got a long way to go” was probably what we all thought when Gwen Stefani said she was “Japanese…. I am, you know,” in a bizarre interview for Allure (girl. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT).

Anyway André 3000 slaps on this song and I enjoy it every time I listen to it. I don’t think anyone has ever written a rhyming couplet with “Martin Luther” and “upgrade computer” but… well, these guys did it. Also the production features this sound which I can only describe as a frog jumping up and down.

Only one bone to pick with this track and that’s this line:

what if Picasso only used one colour?

VERDICT: what colour…… is BOP?

BONUS TRACKS

Acoustic version of ‘Real Thing’. nice. great. good.
Weird fuck-ass MIDI lounge jazz version of ‘What You Waiting For’. criminal. disaster. goodbye.

🧪 In Summation

Bops to flops ratio: 9:3

I had so much to say about this album so if you have made it all the way to the end, CONGRATULATIONS. I promise the next Charity Shop Album Review will be shorter.

The cultural appropriation and racism of the poorly-conceived Harajuku Girls is one of the lasting legacies of Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Unfortunately, we never got recognition from Stefani that she’d crossed a line with the concept.

This will always be a very nostalgic record for me. I definitely forgot how much of an eighties influence the latter half of it has. Although there’s a lot going on in the production of this album and some critics argue that it’s all over the place, I think it’s solidified as a cohesive work of art. Good art? Bad art? Messy art? Misguided art? All of these things. But for me, this will always be one of the most memorable albums released in 2004.

The next record up for a Charity Shop Album Review is from the year 2008. And no, you’re probably not going to recognise it, although it has super-strong references to much-beloved tween music. Will it have the, oh, what do you call it? The X Factor?

I guess we’ll have to wait and find out!