Tragic Kingdom (studio album) by No Doubt

A collection of mostly B side material with a few excellent songs scattered amongst the filler content. These tracks include Spiderwebs, Excuse Me Mr., Just A Girl and Don't Speak. They are all filled with energy and capture the sound the group are trying to go for perfectly. They all have a fantastic chorus at the centre and some simple instrumentation to back it up making for an infectious song. Every other song is the same as this except they lack the chorus and fail to hook the listener by getting stuck in their head. This makes for a repetitive listen for us and due to the elongated length of the record the sound is really tiring by the time you get to the end of the record. Also, there isn't a large amount of experimentation or uniqueness about the instrumentation and in my opinion that makes the record quite boring and makes me not want to come back. Overall, definitely worth listening to once to pick out those few fantastic songs but after that there is no reason to frequently revisit this record.

From VictorVale 04/12/2022 22:44

Fenomenal! E bem variado quanto aos ritmos!

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This is a close second to Rock Steady for me. Full of hits and great deep cuts but a ton of filler at the end

No Doubt's first proper album as not-an-11-or-so-give-or-take-piece-ska band is a set of a bunch of songs penned about Stefani's relationship and subsequent breakup with the guitarist Kaman.

It makes for quite a drama and fuel's Sefani's best lyrics of her career.

This is the first album I ever bought so I have an affinity for it, but at an attempt for objectivity, it is good not great.

Don't Speak and Just a Girl are excellent and well known singles.

Spiderwebs, Excuse Me Mr. and Sunday Morning are standouts as well.

Tragic Kingdom is overly long and loses my interest past Don't Speak docking some points for me. It would have been a service to the material to scale this down to 11 songs in a classic less is more lesson.

No Doubt gets progressively worse from here but it's Stefani's rise to fame and longevity of popularity that is the interesting tale and here is where it all started.

That and the drummer always played naked which had to at least garner a few extra fans.

From RoundTheBend 05/15/2016 05:15

When I was 12... this was the shit.

Just amazing

From glitter-bubbles 12/18/2014 17:08

I really wish they would come out with another album this good. Such a great album even years later!

From swhaze 04/14/2014 19:08

Man, I sure wish Gwen Stefani was still making music like this! I remember purchasing this album back when it was new after hearing "Spiderwebs" and "Don't Speak" on the radio. The album remained in constant rotation on my CD player for many years thereafter and I count it as one of those "special" albums where everything about it seems to work it its favor. This is one of those rare CDs that you can listen right through without having to skip any tracks. I'd say there are maybe 5 absolute classics, 6 very good tracks and 3 okay ones.

No Doubt's best album. Unfortunately, it's pretty much their only good album.

Nonetheless, one of the best albums of the 90's.