Rock

As she goes into the new year, Gwen Stefani is reflecting on one of her 2024 highlights: No Doubt‘s headline-making Coachella reunion.
“Performing at Coachella and feeling all that love for us after all this time was kind of overwhelming,” the “Hollaback Girl” singer reportedly told  U.K. magazine HELLO!, noting that she still feels “incredibly lucky” for the experience months later.

“We hadn’t done anything together for so long, so to do that and be there for each other, with all of our families, meant so much to me,” Stefani continued. “It had been so long but it was as if we had never been apart.”

No Doubt took the stage for the first time since 2015 in April, appearing as special guests on the second night of the California festival. During the band’s set, Olivia Rodrigo joined the Voice coach to duet on “Bathwater,” and the rockers cycled through all of their biggest hits, including “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl.”

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Formed in 1986, No Doubt released six albums — including nine-week Billboard 200 chart-topper Tragic Kingdom — before disbanding in the mid 2010s. Stefani released her debut solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., in 2004.

Two decades later, the vocalist is fresh off the release of her fifth studio album, Bouquet, which arrived in November. The LP features “Purple Irises,” a duet by Stefani and husband Blake Shelton, which the couple performed together at the 2024 ACM Awards in May.

A couple months later, the pair celebrated their three-year wedding anniversary. “It has always been you,” Stefani wrote on Instagram at the time, while the country crooner posted a selfie with his wife and gushed, “I love you!!!!!!!!!!”

While some fans might be on “Fascination Street” when it comes to their favorite musicians, The Cure frontman Robert Smith understands Chappell Roan‘s frustrations with what she has described as the sometimes “predatory behavior” she has experienced.
During a recent chat with Annie Mcmanus and Nick Grimshaw of BBC podcast Sidetracked, the Grammy-nominated musician shared his thoughts on the subject, noting that the relationship between musician and fans can be a complicated one nowadays. “I think what you’re doing as an artist, you want people to feel like they’re engaging with you. But it is a modern-world phenomenon that there’s a sense of entitlement that didn’t used to be there amongst fans,” he explained. “When we started out, it was kind of enough that we did what we did, and people didn’t really expect, as a consumer, I didn’t expect something more. It was enough to kind of see Alex Harvey or to see David Bowie. I didn’t expect to, like, hang out with them or get to know them, whereas now, it seems almost like that is part of the deal.”

The rocker — whose 14th studio album Songs of a Lost World debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 after its arrival on Nov. 1 — added that The Cure also experienced unwelcome fan behavior as the group grew in popularity. “We obviously have experienced quite a lot of obsessive fan behavior down the years, and it can feel quite threatening, honestly,” he shared. “If you have people sleeping outside your front door, it can get very weird. … But when it comes to your front door and people are there and they feel like somehow the cosmos has fated and you’re dealing with people who perhaps aren’t quite you know, right all the time. So you think like, ‘How do you respond to this?’ It’s impossible, really.”

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Smith added that it can be even tougher for artists like Chappell, who saw their fame skyrocket rather than experience a gradual growth. “It is more difficult to deal with things because you’ve not grounded at a lower level,” he shared of The Cure’s own, more manageable ride. “It took us years and years and years of touring, going around the world and doing stuff, until by the time we’d started to get properly famous, I kind of knew how to respond. I’d already developed that as part of like, who I was.”

“But being famous, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, I can’t imagine many worse ways of living,” the musician added. “‘Cause it’s horrible being gawked at all the time and prodded and poked and people expecting more of you all the time. It’s a very strange thing.”

Over the last few months, Roan — who was named Billboard‘s Top New Artist of 2024 and is in the running for 2025’s best new artist Grammy, among other gramophones — has been outspoken about the inappropriate behavior she’s faced from fans and photographers alike, and has in turn received support from musicians including Miley Cyrus, Noah Kahan and Jewel. “I’ve been in too many nonconsensual physical and social interactions and I just need to lay it out and remind you, women don’t owe you s–t,” she wrote in an August social media post. “I chose this career path because because I love music and art and honoring my inner child, I do not accept harassment of any kind because I chose this path, nor do I deserve it.”

And in October, the “Good Luck, Babe!” singer confronted a photographer on the red carpet who had been rude to her at a previous event. “You were so disrespectful to me at the Grammys,” she said in video captured of the moment. “I remember. You were so rude to me. And I deserve an apology for that … You need to apologize to me.”

Watch Robert Smith discuss toxic fan behavior on Sidetracked below:

Chris Martin is known for being a super-chill dude. The Coldplay singer seems perpetually at ease, consistently radiating a positive energy and a “let’s hug it out” vibe that has helped fill stadiums around the world (usually for three or more nights) for the past two years on his band’s record-setting Music of the Spheres tour.
And in a new Rolling Stone cover story, Martin seems, for the most part, completely unbothered, leaning into radical acceptance of what his band’s music means and how the world hears their operating thesis: peace and love are the answer.

“When I’m saying these things about world peace, I’m also talking about my own inside,” he told the magazine. “It’s a daily thing not to hate yourself. Forget about outside critics — it’s the inside ones, too. That’s really our mission right now: We are consciously trying to fly the flag for love being an approach to all things. There aren’t that many [groups] that get to champion that philosophy to that many people. So we do it. And I need to hear that too, so that I don’t give up and just become bitter and twisted and hidden away, and hate everybody. I don’t want to do that, but it’s so tempting.”

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Much of the profile runs around a familiar topic: Coldplay not being cool. But after 28 years, 100 million albums and more than 10 million tickets sold on their tour to date , Martin, once again, said that he’s 100% okay with leaning into the Coldplay-ness of it all and not worrying what people say, or think, about his band.

“There’ve been times where we [were like], ‘Well, we should probably try and look a bit like this or talk a bit like that,’” Martin said about the constant pressure to change up from the group’s signature happy global peace warrior vibe. “And now, it’s just like, ‘No.’ Just follow whatever’s being sent. And that’s a very liberating place to be. If you want a puppet to sing a bit of a song, well, some people might not like this — my mum being one of them, for example. But my point is, that’s part of my journey to be like, ‘Well, I love you, and this is what we’re doing.”

Sure, they sing with puppets and wear themed outfits on their tours, and popped into QVC to hawk their latest album, Moon Music. But for Martin, the sometimes derisive slings and arrows are part of the “you do you, I’ll do me” game, something the preternaturally chill singer said he’s come to accept. “It would be terrible if we lived in a society where everyone had to [like the same thing]. We’re a very, very easy, safe target,” Martin said. “We’re not going to bite back. We are four white, middle-class men from England. We deserve to take some s–t for what our people have done. There’s a reason we get to play all around the world, and part of it is not necessarily very healthy.”

The Music of the Spheres tour is an overwhelming visual extravaganza, full of confetti, dancing aliens, four blasts of fireworks, kinetic dance floors, exercise bikes that power the satellite stage and enough unassailably sweet, moving moments that it can sometimes feel like Mickey Mouse’s Starlight Parade. Which, by the way, Martin is also totally fine with.

“Maybe the theatrics are all part of that. It’s a bit Disneyland-ish in terms of ‘OK, let’s exist for a couple of hours in this place where no one hates each other,’” he said. “The second-happiest place on Earth. Copyright, Coldplay.”

Martin appears open to speak about just about any topic — including his incessant teasing of son Moses, 18, and his endless love for daughter Apple, 20 — except his relationship with longtime love (and reported fiancée) actress Dakota Johnson. In the wake of tabloid rumors questioning whether their love light has faded, Martin told RS it is not his story to tell.

“It is important to say that [romantic love] is such a big factor in everything, even though it feels right to keep it precious and private; I’m not denying its power,” he said, though the writer noted that the singer mentioned Johnson in passing several times during their chats, including that they had listened to Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour album together recently. He also revealed that among his “handful” of best friends are Later, he says he has only a handful of best friends, among them Coldplay’s manager, his bandmates, his kids and Johnson.

Martin is also keenly aware of the boom-bust cycle of pop stardom and the toll it can take, noting that every year there’s a new artist that comes along, or releases an album that “puts you in your place,” leaving fellow musicians humbled and inspired. For him, that was Chappell Roan this year. “I hope she’s OK,” he said of the “Pink Pony Club” singer who has been frank about her struggles managing the suddenly intense spotlight.

“It’s hard for the younger ones, especially when they’re on their own,” he added, giving thanks that he’s had his three longtime friends/bandmates bassist Guy Berryman, guitarist Jonny Buckland and drummer Will Champion, along for the ride.

In the end, Martin summed up the tension of being both one of the most beloved and one of the most critically dunked-on bands on the planet. “It’s like you start off as a band with three fans and one guy at the bar who thinks you’re s–t. And then you get to a band with 3,000 fans and 10 guys on the internet who think you’re s–t,” he said. “And then as you become the biggest band in the world, you also become the least popular band in the world. You can never escape. You can never win, if you’re looking for just winning. The stronger the light, the darker the shadow.”

He also once again leaned into the notion that his band has only two more albums in the tank, an animated musical based on a story he and manager Phil Harvey are writing together, as well as a final, self-titled LP that will bring it back to the start. “The cover of the album I’ve known it since 1999,” he said of the image that harkens back to Coldplay’s very earliest days.

Oh, but also he’d love to release a compendium of all the songs that never made it onto a Coldplay album called Alphabetica, which will go through the alphabet thanks to outtakes and orphans that never made the cut. “We don’t have any spare songs with Q,” he lamented. “That’s the one I’m stuck with.”