Gwen Stefani singing new toon
Gwen Stefani has spent 2016, in her words, “on output.”
In March, the pop singer released her first solo album in a decade, “This Is What the Truth Feels Like,” on which she addressed the unraveling of her marriage to rocker Gavin Rossdale and her subsequent romance with country-music hunk Blake Shelton. Then she went on a summer tour, performing songs from “Truth” and her first two solo records, along with classics like “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl” by her long-running rock band, No Doubt.
Now the former star of “The Voice” is returning to television with an animated series on Nickelodeon called “Kuu Kuu Harajuku.” Built around characters she dreamed up as she was writing “Harajuku Girls” — a track from her 2004 solo debut about the fashion-forward women of that Tokyo neighborhood — the show follows the members of a young pop group, HJ5, who have to “come together and use all of their individual strengths to get through obstacles,” Stefani said.
She recently sat down for an interview. The following is an edited transcript.
“I know now that I’ve been a role model.”
Q: You’re a parent. How did that affect what you wanted to do with “Kuu Kuu Harajuku”?
A: I have three boys, so I’ve spent the last 10 years watching cartoons. I think that’s all I’ve watched in the last 10 years. But what I haven’t seen — and what I didn’t see growing up, watching “Scooby-Doo” and “Tom and Jerry” — was girls being girls: singing and dancing and wearing makeup. So it was super-important to me to be able to do something that was appropriate and fun for girls.
Q: Making the show appropriate meant ...
A: Making it a safe place. When I wrote “Just a Girl,” I was talking about how, as a female, you’re born and you don’t think anything about your gender or “Oh, I’m lesser.” Then suddenly you hit puberty, and you’re walking along the street, and someone’s whistling. On tour this summer I would look out at the audience every night and see a dad that was tatted up, probably went to old punk No Doubt shows, and he’d have his daughter on his shoulders in her harajuku outfit, probably her first concert. And I’m singing “Just a Girl” to her, and she’s experiencing it for the first time. I didn’t write the song to be, like, girl power or anything it was interpreted to be. But I know now that I’ve been a role model, and it’s something I take seriously.
Q: Many pop stars talk about rejecting that responsibility. But you’re embracing it.
A: Because I know who I am, and I’m comfortable with my morals and my standards. Oct. 16 birthdays: Actress Angela Lansbury is 91. Actor Barry Corbin is 76. Actress Suzanne Somers is 70. Actor-director Tim Robbins is 58. Actress Kellie Martin is 41. Singer-songwriter John Mayer is 39. Actress Caterina Scorsone is 35.