【译】Pitchfork评No Doubt 1995年专辑《Tragic Kingdom》（悲惨王国）
（原文评于2020.3.15）
In the mid-1990s, when alternative was the new pop, there were all sorts of subgenres duking it out for dominance. The success of grunge put everything from Bush to Blind Melon on the radio, but perhaps the most curious alt offshoot to emerge in one corner of the mainstream was the ska revival.
90年代中期，正是另类音乐成为流行新趋势的时候，各式各样的曲风龙争虎斗，力争上游。车库垃圾摇滚的成功让Bush乐队（鸡瘟前夫的乐队），芒瓜乐队等乐队频繁在电台出现，但最小众的ska曲风的复兴却出乎意料。
The third-wave ska scene ran the gamut from Reel Big Fish’s cornball, horn-driven antics to Less Than Jake’s emo-tinged losercore to Rancid’s gritty take on the Specials to Sublime’s frat-boy-and-420-friendly strain, not to mention the peppy breakthrough of longtime stalwarts the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
随着第三次浪潮出现的ska曲风 从乡巴佬，滑稽小丑的印象到 比Jack的表情大战失败者的风格，到Rancid乐队的坚韧不拔，再到Sublime乐队呈现的 兄弟会与420-friendly的风格，更不用提the Mighty Mighty Bosstones这支ska乐队中坚力量取得的长期性的突破了。
But there was no ’90s ska figure quite like Gwen Stefani, the movement’s Dickies-clad poster-girl turned culturally roving ’00s hitmaker turned People Magazine staple. There is also no pop star origin story quite like hers.
但没有90年代的ska乐队与Gwen的形象相似，从穿着Dickies的海报女郎风 转型至 影响00年代文化的热单制造者，再变为People杂志上的常客。流行明星中Gwen也是独树一帜的存在。
At the urging of Gwen’s keyboardist brother Eric, the Stefanis performed at a school talent show in their native Anaheim, California in the mid-’80s. Their song of choice was “On My Radio,” the 1979 hit by the two-tone ska band the Selecter. Gwen wore a homemade dress that resembled one worn by Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, her favorite musical.
80年代中期，在鸡瘟哥哥Eric的督促下，鸡瘟一家参加了在加州阿纳海姆市（老家）的学校才艺秀，他们表演曲目选的是“On My Radio”，一首发行于1979年由双音ska乐队the Selecter演绎的热门单曲。鸡瘟穿了自己做的裙子，很像她本人最爱的音乐剧《音乐之声》女主Julie Andrews穿的那条。
Showtune theatrics and Selecter singer Pauline Black (who mixes a hyper-feminine chirp with an operatic warble) would go on to influence Gwen’s early vocal style, and set her on the path of pursuing hybrid sounds and aesthetics.
戏剧夸张的表演风格和Selecter乐队女主唱Pauline Black（极具女性化的啁啾声与歌剧般的颤音结为一体） 长期影响了鸡瘟早期嗓音的风格，并使鸡瘟走上追求多元化音乐与美学的道路。
In 1986, Gwen and Eric formed a band alongside John Spence, their classmate and co-worker at the local Dairy Queen. Spence, whose go-to response—“No doubt!”—gave the group its name, shared vocal duties with Gwen and served as her gruff-voiced foil.
1986年，鸡瘟与她的哥哥Eric和 他们的同学John Spence也是一起在本地Dairy Queen冰淇淋店打工的伙伴组成了乐队。成员Spence提议乐队名“No doubt!”，他也与鸡瘟一起担当主唱身份，作为比鸡瘟声音更粗犷的陪衬。
They were just kids in love with the way British bands like the Selecter, Madness, and the Specials made everyday frustrations feel lively, and they were trapped in sunny Orange County, the home of Disneyland and suburban punk ennui. No Doubt played the house-party circuit, quickly found a local following, and picked up members,
他们当时还是孩童，喜欢像 Selecter，Madness，the Specials那样化挫折为乐观的英国乐队时，他们一直都呆在老家橘子郡(也是Disneyland与无聊的郊区朋克的故乡)。No Doubt在家庭派对上不断的巡回表演中，很快地收获了一批粉丝，并在其中招募成员，
including bassist Tony Kanal, who would soon start dating Gwen in secret. But tragedy struck when, in 1987, Spence took his own life. It was the first of three destabilizing events that would change the course of No Doubt, a band forever defined by its interpersonal drama.
其中包括元老人物Tony Kanal，一位即将与鸡瘟进行秘密约会的人物。但1987年飞来横祸，成员Spence结束了自己的生命。这是动摇No Doubt乐队发展方向的三件事中发生的第一件，一个永远被内部矛盾定义的乐队。
After trumpet-player-turned-co-vocalist Alan Meade exited No Doubt, Gwen was ready to front the band on her own. By 1990, the lineup was solidified with fan-turned-drummer Adrian Young, local metal guitarist Tom Dumont, and a robust horn section.
在号手，之后转为主唱的Alan Meade离开乐队后，鸡瘟便准备一个人撑起乐队了。到1990年，随着从粉丝转为鼓手的Adrian Young与本地金属吉他手Tom Dumont和一只强健号角的加入，乐队又团结起来了。
Their popularity around Southern California clubs and colleges grew until finally, they caught the eye of Interscope A&R Tony Ferguson. In 1991, he brought famed record executive Jimmy Iovine to one of No Doubt’s shows, where “Jimmy told someone, ‘That girl will be a star in five years,’” recalled Gwen (and corroborated by Iovine) in a 1996 SPIN cover story.
他们在加州南部的俱乐部，大学里攒积的名气越来越大，终引起了环球Interscope星探Tony Ferguson的注意。在1991年，他将厂牌首席执行官Jimmy Iovine带到了No Doubt其中一场现场演出，当场Jimmy便断言：“这个女孩五年内肯定会红。”（这是鸡瘟在1996年Spin杂志里的回忆，Jimmy也证实了这段话）。
Over the next five years, Gwen would go from singing two-tone covers and her brother’s originals for devoted local crowds, to zig-zagging the globe with her own tales of heartache and rage. She would have to lose the two men closest to her first.
接下来的五年里，鸡瘟将从 为本地的粉丝卖力表演 一个人负责两人份的主唱工作 的身份，转变为 带着自己心碎愤怒的心事在地球上蜿蜒前行，她将不得已失去两个最亲近她的男人。
No Doubt’s debut for Interscope, a 1992 self-titled LP, was mostly (but not entirely) devoid of hooks, and partially informed by Eric’s cabaret flair and goofy sense of humor (they gave away kazoos at the album release party, if that explains anything).
No Doubt的Interscope厂牌的出道作，同名专辑，全专几乎没有抓耳的地方，但不是完全缺少灵气，而那部分是因为Eric歌舞天赋与充满傻气的幽默感（专辑发行会上的赠品是卡祖笛，如果这可以解释一切的话）。
Poor sales made Interscope hesitant to dive right into a follow-up, and the label took a stronger hand in guiding the group’s sound, namely with producer Matthew Wilder. Eric didn’t like that, and over time he isolated himself from the band, despite practice being held at his house.
由于差劲的销量，Interscope犹豫是否要进行宣传工作，厂牌也在插手指导乐队的音乐，即与制作人Matthew Wilder合作，Eric不喜欢这样的行为，而且随着时间推移，他将自己与乐队孤立开，除非乐队的排练地点在他家里。
After he quit in 1994 to work as an animator on The Simpsons, the other members took over songwriting duties on the album that would become Tragic Kingdom. Right around the same time, Kanal called it off with Gwen, after seven years together.
在1994年他退出乐队，转而担当动画片《辛普森一家》的制作人，其他人则分担了他在乐队的主导地位，分担起写歌的工作，这也成就了专辑《Tragic Kingdom》。与之同时Tony Canal与鸡瘟7年的恋情长跑结束。
Gwen had never really written her own lyrics, but it helped that she was suddenly filled with pain and confusion. She was, in many ways, a girl with traditional values: In interviews from this era, she marveled at the fact that she got famous instead of starting a family, and her songs sometimes yearn for a “simple kind of life.”
Gwen在此之前从未给自己写过歌词，但突如其来的的痛楚与迷惑让她灵感泉涌。以前在很多方面，她都是一个秉持传统价值观的女孩，她对自己的成名感到惊奇，而不是对成立家庭这件事，她的歌曲里也隐隐约约透露着对“简朴生活”（“simple kind of life.”）的渴望。
But this is perhaps not the impression you’d get from the initial wallop of Tragic Kingdom, featuring one of the decade’s fieriest opening four-song runs, all of which were singles: “Spiderwebs,” a new-wave rafter-shaker about a girl screening her calls;
但这也许不是你从《Tragic Kingdom》的重击中得到的第一印象，因为专辑前四首开场曲都是那个十年中最爆炸热烈的歌。单曲“Spiderwebs,”新浪潮曲风的延续，关于一个女孩屏蔽她电话的歌曲。
“Excuse Me Mr.”, a dramatic ska-punk number about a girl confronting a dude who’s avoiding her;
“Excuse Me Mr.”一首戏剧性的斯卡朋克歌曲，讲的是一个女孩与一个躲着她的男人对峙的故事.
“Just a Girl,” a fun-but-menacing-sounding hit about a girl just trying to live;
“Just a Girl”一首有趣但极具威胁力的热单，讲述了一个女孩努力生活的故事。
and “Happy Now?”, an ever-shifting rock song about a girl chiding her ex. The point was made: girl mad
.“Happy Now?”一首不断变化的摇滚歌曲，讲的是一个女孩责备她的前任，重点是女孩发狂。
Following the surge of third-wave feminism in the early ’90s, the mid-’90s became the peak of the “angry white female” era in rock and pop. It was a time when feminized aggression—from Hole and riot grrrl to Liz Phair and Alanis Morissette—was suddenly perceived as being on-trend, as if women haven’t been furious forever. Stefani, girly tomboy ultra, arguably benefited from this kind of branding, even while she maintained the fun, energetic personality that led Courtney Love to dub her a “cheerleader” and others to call her the “anti-Courtney Love.”
随着90年代早期，中期中的第三波女权运动的兴起，摇滚与流行领域中的“愤怒白女”达到巅峰。一个女性化全面侵略的时代，从Hole到riot grrrl到Liz Phair再到Alanis Morissette ---突然被视作一种潮流，好像女人永远不会生气一样。鸡瘟，一个假小子一样的女孩，可以说从这样的标签中受益，尽管她保持着有趣，活力四射的个性，这也使得Courtney Love给她起“拉拉队长”的外号，其他人则称她为“anti-Courtney Love.”
Lead single “Just a Girl” was Gwen’s bridge to planet angry. Upon its release in September 1995, it became a theme song for any girl fed up with living in a boy’s world—with the emphasis once again being on girl. Spice Girls would soon turn “girl power” into a full-on marketing technique, but “Just a Girl” was some kind of magic middle-ground in the context of ’90s pop-feminism: sassy, addictively sweet and sour, yet still accessible.
首单“Just a Girl”为鸡瘟的愤怒埋下伏笔。单曲1995年9月发行后，便成为女性不满男性主宰世界的主题曲，歌曲不断地在强调“女孩”的存在。Spice Girls之后很快地把“女性力量”包装成市场营销策略，但“Just a Girl”是90年代流行乐女权运动中奇妙的中间产物：大胆，活跃，令人上瘾的酸甜，但听众却能接受。
Dumont’s indelible looping riff adds a taunting feeling, while the lyrics leave interpretation conveniently ajar with lines like “I’m just a girl/So don’t let me have any rights.” Never has Stefani’s vocal style—with its forays into babydoll voice and its breathless, swooping belts—felt more intentional as a performance technique meant to amplify her message.
吉他手Tom Dument谈奏的重复乐段让人流连忘返，增添了嘲弄感，而歌词含义则显得不协调，如“I’m just a girl/So don’t let me have any rights.”鸡瘟的歌唱风格—对娃娃音，突袭式的抽打----作为一种旨在扩充她想表达的信息的演唱技巧，从未让人感到刻意造作。
“Just a Girl” is not a subtle song, but what it’s doing is quietly masterful: The sarcasm subverts the underlying victimhood in a sneering way, but victimhood is also something girls (particularly white or privileged girls) quickly understand as a tool for getting what they want.
“Just a Girl” 不是首精心打磨的歌曲，但它却呈现了悄无声息下的驾驭力，技艺精湛：用嘲笑讥讽的方式颠覆了潜在的受害者身份，但受害者仍是女孩们（尤其是特权白女）常被看作是牟利的工具。
Gwen’s Tragic Kingdom-era pain was incandescent because it felt off the cuff, uninhabited, and barely removed from its cause. You saw that up close in “Don’t Speak,” the breakup ballad that pushed No Doubt’s success over the edge, topping the Billboard airplay chart for 16 weeks.
Gwen在Tragic Kingdom时期的痛苦是炽热的，因为这份痛苦像是突如其来的，荒凉的，几乎没有甩脱它的理由。在Don’t Speak中可以很清晰地看到这一点，这首分手抒情将No Doubt的事业推向顶峰，霸占Billboard电台Air Play榜16周榜首。
Starting in late 1996 and continuing for much of 1997, flutters of Spanish guitar and angelic whispers of “hush hush, darling” were inescapable; for those listening across radio formats or watching MTV at the time, the song’s ubiquity reached “if I hear this one more time…” levels.
从1996年末一直持续到1997年几乎整年时间，西班牙吉他拍动声与天使般的低语“hush hush, darling”处处可听。对于当时听电台和看MTV的观众，这首歌的烂大街程度无异于“再也不想听一遍”的程度，
But people also could not look away from the saga of Gwen and Tony, SoCal ska’s Stevie and Lindsey. Every night they’d hit the stage and seemingly be forced to relive their split through “Don’t Speak,” a song musically at odds with nearly everything in their upbeat catalog.
但人们也无法将目光从Gwen与Tony之间的故事移开。他们是斯卡俱乐部的Stevie and Lindsey。每晚他们都会登台表演，似乎被迫通过“Don’t Speak,”回顾他们的分手历程，一首几乎与他们其他积极向上的音乐作品格格不入的歌曲。
Not every song on Tragic Kingdom is overtly about the breakup or the frustrations of girlhood—this is ’90s California ska, after all, a few mostly positive chillers are required. But the album tracks skew cheesy, especially now. Ska bands of the era would sometimes show off their funk chops with a disco cut on their LPs,
《Tragic Kingdom》的歌曲并不全都公开描述了少女时代的分手与沮丧，这是张90年代的加州ska，终竟还是需要些积极精神的冷却，但这张专辑曲目 尤其是现在看来 偏俗气。那个年代的ska乐队有时会在专辑封面上 通过迪斯科舞厅来展现他们的funk风范。
but No Doubt’s take, “You Can Do It,” is plagued by fake disco strings and a guitar jangle that borders on musical clip art. “Different People,” a brass-and-keyboard-led ska track about how the world is big and diverse, has the tension of a child’s picture book, and the depth of one too.
但No Doubt的 “You Can Do It,”采用了假disco琴弦和吉他刺耳声发出的几近音乐剪辑艺术的困扰。“Different People,” 是一首以铜管乐器键盘主导的ska歌曲，讲述了世界之大，无奇不有，既有儿童绘本的张力，也有儿童绘本的深度。
Eric’s musical-theater-strikes-back closer “Tragic Kingdom” is cringeworthy in highly specific ways: the sampling of theme-park announcements, the egregiously drawn-out tempo changes, the fact that it seems to be about how evil Walt Disney is. (Besides, on an album like this, the most tragic of kingdoms is actually Gwen and Tony’s love story, not the suburbia surrounding Mickey’s castle.)
Eric在《Tragic Kingdom》中音乐剧式的弹奏极度令人厌烦，具体表现在以下几个方面：对主题公园公告的采样，烂炸了的冗长节奏变化，像是在陈述Walt Disney的邪恶罪行一般（另外，在这样一张专辑中，“王国”中最“悲惨”的地方在于Gwen与Tony的爱情故事，而不是围绕着米奇城堡的郊区故事）。
The rush of energy you get from Tragic Kingdom’s opening run is enough to keep the album within spitting distance of the ’90s canon, emblematic of a specific time and place. Other highs include sixth single “Sunday Morning,” where the seasoned band easily finds the pocket with nimble, driving percussion, reggae rhythms, and overdubbed harmonies.
你从《Tragic Kingdom》开头中感受到的急促感 足以让它达到接近90年代的经典之作的地位，象征着特定的时间和地点，专辑其他亮点也包括六单 “Sunday Morning,” 在歌曲中，这支老练的乐队很快找到了一个百宝箱，里面有着敏锐强烈的打击乐器，雷鬼节奏和新录音轨上的和声。
“End It On This,” one of the only songs credited to Dumont, Kanal, and both Stefanis, is low-key pummeling: Gwen, in all her high-low vocal glory, recalls the last kiss with Tony while the band fires on all cylinders. Every player gets to show off a little with their “thing,”
“End It On This,” 是Tom Dument ，Tony Canal，鸡瘟与她歌共同创作出的仅有歌曲之一，歌曲为低调的重击，Gwen也在她高低音的光环荣耀下，回忆起与Tony的最后一吻，当时乐队正全力运转。每名成员都卖弄了下他们的“小东西”，
but Dumont is the secret all-star: His tough opening riff sets the song into intricate lockstep. Dumont, much like fellow unlikely-’90s-rock-star Rivers Cuomo, was a Kiss fan and longtime metalhead; you can hear that in his guitar hooks, which lent Tragic Kingdom a fizzy edge.
但Dumont却秘密完成了高水平的演奏，开头中重复乐段很是强硬，造就了该歌的环环相扣，紧密相连。Dument很像另一位同类90s摇滚明星（可能是）Rivers Cuomo。Dument是Kiss乐队的粉丝，也是名资深的重金属迷，你可以从他吉他抓耳的旋律听出，这给Tragic Kingdom带来了泡沫般的边际。
If Weezer were politely challenging the post-grunge alternative landscape with moves copped from the Cars, No Doubt were more like Blondie: a band that came out of a distinct regional punk scene, hit it big with a hybrid new-wave sound, and faced both adoration and criticism largely centered around its platinum-blonde singer. This last factor became a central tension in the narrative of No Doubt once Tragic Kingdom began its long ascent up the charts (it was a diamond-seller by the decade’s end).
如果Weezer乐队礼貌地挑战由the Cars引领的车库另类摇滚的领域，No Doubt变得像Blondie乐队一样，走出独特地域性的punk领域，用new-wave的混合曲风震撼乐坛，面对着集中在金发女主唱的批评与赞美。后者因素成为了No Doubt在专辑《Tragic Kingdom》的叙事张力点。专辑在排行榜上缓慢攀升，在90年代末认证钻石专辑。
There was this recursive interview cycle where the band would discuss how Stefani was always the solo cover star, which said magazine would also do; then the band would complain about that in their next interview. They portrayed the meta “photographer singles out Gwen” plotline in the “Don’t Speak” video, and to an extent did it themselves on the album cover, where Gwen poses in front offering up an orange while the guys scatter in the desolate grove behind her.
接踵不断的采访不难免会让团队内部讨论起鸡瘟独占封面的话题，一般杂志都只让鸡瘟一个人登封面，其他队员们又会在之后的采访中反复抱怨，他们在“Don’t Speak”mv中描绘了“鸡瘟被摄影师单独挑出”的情节，专辑封面上也强调了这一情节：鸡瘟在前面凹造型，男人们则散在后面荒凉的小树林里，为鸡瘟提供柑橘。
But Gwen’s solo career was always more a question of when. After Tragic Kingdom’s follow-up, 2000’s new-wave coming-of-age Return of Saturn, Stefani struck out on her own with duets alongside techno star Moby and rapper Eve, which suggested she was defined less by a specific sound than a particular attitude.
但回到当初看，鸡瘟的单飞事业的开启只是时间问题。 《Tragic Kingdom》的下一张专辑，2000年发行的新浪潮重磅回归专辑《Return of Saturn》之后，鸡瘟与Techno歌手Moby与说唱女星Eve进行了二重唱合作，更表明了她更多特立独行的态度，而不是单靠独特的嗓音，
It would take years, well after she appropriated Japanese Harajuku street style and scored more hip-hop hits, for people to recognize the pattern: the Orange County girl with a bindi between her Chola eyebrows had always been borrowing from other cultures and using it to form her identity in messy ways. Taking its cues from two-tone, where Jamaican rhythms met a punk point of view,
几年后挪用日本原宿街头文化，创造了更多hip-hop风的热单，让人们认清了其中的模式。这个有着朱罗眉毛，眉心红点的橘郡女孩在对其他文化的借鉴吸收中混乱地形成了自己的风格。这也使得鸡瘟可以从牙买加节奏与punk的双音对撞中得到启发，
Tragic Kingdom was only the beginning for Gwen. Back then, she was just an It Grrrl full of contradictions, pulling a little from everywhere and figuring out where to land.
Tragic Kingdom只是Gwen事业的启程。曾经，她只是一个充满矛盾的女孩，从矛盾点出发，在矛盾点着陆。
