Looking back on the sessions for No Doubt’s 2012 album, Push and Shove, Gwen Stefani says, “I had a couple of hard years.” It was the band’s first LP in 11 years, but the album failed to thrive. Stefani points to the birth of her third son as the turning point. After a rough pregnancy, she took a job as a judge on The Voice, partly to be close to Pharrell Williams, who helped write and produce several of her hits. Williams was determined to get Stefani back in the studio. Williams says, “It was time for her to really express herself and not have a bunch of people telling her what to do.” He added, “I held up the mirror and said, ‘Do you know who’s in there? Do you know how many people respect that person?’ The more she saw, the deeper she reached, and the crazier the stuff came out.”
