Gwen Stefani‘s debut solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby, was released 20 years ago, and she tells People magazine that it was a time of total creativity for her.
“At that point, things were unhinged, meaning that I had zero restrictions: I wasn’t in the band. I didn’t have children. I wasn’t married,” Gwen tells People. “I was like, ‘I’m making a guilty-pleasure dance record.'”
Gwen’s memory obviously isn’t perfect: She was actually married when she started making the record. The album came out in 2004; she and Gavin Rossdale wed in 2002.
“I had such an unbelievably clear vision of what I wanted to do,” she adds. “I had made a style Bible … I had torn [out pictures from] every magazine, everything from makeup images, to hair, to clothes, to musical references. Everything was collected.”
Gwen also recalls writing her first #1 hit, “Hollaback Girl,” with Pharrell Williams: “We did the ‘bananas’ part, and we knew after we wrote it — we just made a cultural collision. We were jumping up on the couch, and we got the champagne.”
The star is also looking back in her new video for “Somebody Else’s” from her new album, Bouquet, dropping on Nov. 15. Sharp-eyed fans pointed out that when she premiered the video during her appearance on HSN on Nov. 11, she was wearing the same 1994 Vivienne Westwood Spring Collection corset that she wore in the video for No Doubt‘s 1996 video for “Spiderwebs.”