Without realising it, 1997 has gotten off to a pretty rocking start. Established names like Blur, and U2, have ensured that guitars have been well-represented at the top of the charts. Carrying on the trend are a band enjoying their breakthrough smash…

Don’t Speak, by No Doubt (their 1^st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 16^th February – 9^th March 1997

…which has gone on to become one of the decade’s best-remembered hits. ‘Don’t Speak’ is both of its time – it has that US alt-rock sound, with the post-grunge power chords, that had worked for Deep Blue Something a few months earlier. But it also has some more unusual ideas in the mix: a moody flamenco beat, and melodramatic lyrics delivered more like a showtune (You and me, I can see us dying, Aren’t we…?)

Perhaps, strangest of all, there’s a woman singing! A rock song! Any excuse not to do those dishes… I jest, of course! There have been plenty of women singing rock songs at the top of the chart, and female-fronted rock bands, like Blondie, the Pretenders, T’Pau, and…. You get my point. Gwen Stefani’s fantastic vocal performance was, I’d say, one of the main selling-points.

‘Don’t Speak’ had been around for a while – as had No Doubt, who formed in Anaheim, in 1986, and went through nearly a decade of trying to make it – in a more upbeat form. Stefani re-wrote it after breaking up with the band’s bassist Tony Kanal. The pair then took the leading roles in the video, which plays on the way the media side-lined the three other members to focus on Stefani. The band were on the verge of splitting up, allegedly, on the day they filmed it.

As good as ‘Don’t Speak’ is – and I do like it, though wouldn’t include it my pantheon of all-time nineties classics – it could be seen as a bit of a sell-out for the originally ska/punk No Doubt. The lead single from their 3^rd album, the breakneck ‘Just a Girl’ had been a minor hit, and then made #3 on re-release later in 1997, and I do wish that had been the bigger smash.

Maybe it’s just the fact that the peak of their career coincides almost exactly with my formative years, but it seems very odd that this is No Doubt’s, and Gwen Stefani’s, only chart-topper. At least they managed one in the UK, with ‘Don’t Speak’ never officially being released in the US, despite a sixteen-week run on top of the airplay charts. Before we go then I should mention that, in my humble opinion, No Doubt’s grimy ‘Hella Good’, Stefani’s glorious solo debut ‘What You Waiting For?’, and her equally cool, um, ‘Cool’, all should have been number ones. No Doubt, meanwhile, recently reunited for the first time in almost a decade, and played a well-received set at Coachella.