Gwen Stefani has had one of the longest-running careers in the music industry. But all of her
success hasn't stopped her from rubbing some people the wrong way.
Here are the celebrities who reportedly give this "Hollaback Girl" zero friendly holla's.
Stefani's most rumored feud partner is Courtney Love.
All the way back in 2004, Love explained to Seventeen,
"Being famous is just like being in high school. I'm not interested in being Gwen
Stefani. She's the cheerleader, and I'm out in the smoker shed."
In response, Stefani penned arguably her most famous song, "Hollaback Girl,"
based on the premise that if Love thought she was a cheerleader,
she would show her how good of a cheerleader she could be.
"I started hearing, like, rumors about me, like,
'She's just like a cheerleader,' like a put-down, you know?"
If only this feud was simply that clear cut. Love reignited things once again in 2010,
when she told Howard Stern that Gavin Rossdale, Stefani's husband at the time,
had cheated on Stefani with Love herself. Even though Love claimed that Stefani already knew it
happened before she went on the show, airing their dirty laundry was likely a low blow.
Love struck up the feud again in 2013, when she alleged that Rossdale was responsible
for Stefani's success, especially in the fashion realm. She told ABC News,
"He runs the Gwen show, that's him. He runs the clothing line,
he f---ing built that up, he has nothing else to do."
Speaking of Gavin Rossdale, Stefani discussed his misstep
with the couple's nanny in an interview with Harper's Bazaar — an affair she
discovered the day after performing at the Grammys in 2015. Stefani said,
"It was the beginning of hell. Like six, seven, eight months of torture,
trying to figure out this big secret."
"All these things just kept happening and then my life blew up in my face."
Stefani filed for divorce in 2015, after 13 years of marriage.
For the sake of their children, Stefani and Rossdale have tried to remain cordial,
with mixed results. A source told Hollywood Life in early 2020,
"They do their best to get along for the sake of the kids, but they only communicate
when they need to. […] They have trouble even being in the same room together."
Rossdale also called co-parenting during the pandemic, quote, "tricky"
in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. But if we're being honest,
everything during the pandemic was pretty "tricky."
Stefani caught the eye
of Rihanna in 2011, and not for anything good. When asked by HuffPost if she thought Rihanna,
Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga had been influenced by her style, Stefani disagreed, adding,
"I usually put pants on."
The alleged feud gained traction in 2015 when there was speculation that Rihanna might join
Stefani as a judge on "The Voice." At the time, the National Enquirer claimed
that Rihanna was holding onto a grudge against Stefani for the pants comment.
The outlet also alleged that Stefani had an apparent long-term grudge against ReeRee,
despite her being the one that started the feud.
But whatever rumored bad blood there may have been
had dissipated by 2018 when Stefani delighted fans with a performance of Rihanna's hit,
"Umbrella," on the opening night of her residency in Las Vegas. Since neither star
has ever commented on the alleged beef, maybe this one was just drummed up for the tabloids.
Miranda Lambert
has a reason to possibly dislike Stefani. Lambert was once married to Blake Shelton,
the country star who judges "The Voice" with Stefani and has been
romantically linked to her since 2015 — the same year he and Lambert divorced.
"She literally makes my day 100 percent better."
The first time a reporter asked Lambert about Stefani after she began dating Shelton, Lambert
said she simply hung up the phone. In 2017, when Lambert won album of the year at the CMAs,
she used her acceptance speech to speak about her "heartbreak." But according to Hollywood Life,
Stefani supposedly didn't have much sympathy for Lambert, with a source close to Stefani claiming,
"None of them need to be living in the past."
"I feel like overall, I'm really in a great place."
By 2020, it seemed whatever real or fake issues between the two women had been resolved,
despite ongoing rumors. For her part, Lambert moved on with Anderson East in 2015, before
marrying Brendan Mcloughlin in 2018. Although Gossip Cop reported that Lambert and Shelton's
divorce was messy, any grudge Lambert still holds is reportedly directed at her ex, and has nothing
to do with Stefani. We're taking all of this with a grain of salt, but according to the outlet,
"Everyone's staying polite when they're forced to be in the same room."
Stefani's history of cultural
appropriation has been deemed problematic. And none more so than the video for "Hollaback
Girl," which featured four Japanese backup dancers known as the Harajuku Girls. Salon noted in 2005:
"Stefani fawns over harajuku style in her lyrics, but her appropriation of this subculture
makes about as much sense as the Gap selling Anarchy T-shirts; she's swallowed a subversive
youth culture in Japan and barfed up another image of submissive giggling Asian women."
Actor and comedian Margaret Cho also had some choice words for the pop star, blogging in 2005,
"I want to like [the Harajuku Girls], and I want to think they are great,
but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes,
and I don't want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show."
Cho then compared the Japanese schoolgirl uniforms to, quote, "blackface," but ultimately chose to
accept the situation, because, quote, "an ugly picture is better than a blank space."
For her part, Stefani defended her collaboration with the Harajuku Girls in a 2019 interview
with Billboard, claiming it was cultural appreciation not appropriation. She explained,
"When it first came out, I think people understood that it was an
artistic and literal bow down to a culture that I was a superfan of."
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