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Stars Who Can’t Stand Gwen Stefani

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Gwen Stefani built a career on hits like “Hollaback Girl,” but a handful of famous names have made it clear they’re not singing along.

Nicki Swift’s “Stars Who Can’t Stand Gwen Stefani,” released in early June 2021, digs into the feuds, jabs, and lingering resentments that have trailed the No Doubt frontwoman through more than three decades in the spotlight. The rundown moves from a decade-plus rivalry with Courtney Love to romantic fallout with Miranda Lambert, a quieted spat with Rihanna, and criticism over Stefani’s Harajuku Girls era. None of it has slowed her commercially, but it’s a reminder that even pop’s most polished stars collect enemies along the way.

• Courtney Love’s 2004 dig in Seventeen — calling Stefani “the cheerleader” while she was “out in the smoker shed” — reportedly inspired Stefani to write “Hollaback Girl.”
• Gavin Rossdale’s affair with the family’s nanny ended his marriage to Stefani and left the exes unable to share a room afterward.
• Miranda Lambert hung up on a reporter who asked about Stefani after Blake Shelton, Lambert’s ex-husband, began dating the singer.

The Courtney Love Feud That Wouldn’t Die

The bad blood between Stefani and Courtney Love traces back to 2004, when Love told Seventeen magazine that Stefani was “the cheerleader” while Love herself was “out in the smoker shed” — a jab at Stefani’s clean-cut, mainstream image versus Love’s grunge-scene credibility. Stefani didn’t let it slide quietly; the slight is widely credited as the spark behind “Hollaback Girl,” the 2005 single that turned the insult into a chart-topping comeback.

Love wasn’t finished. In a 2010 appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show, she claimed she’d had an affair with Stefani’s then-husband, Gavin Rossdale, long before the marriage ended publicly. Three years later, in 2013, Love added another accusation, alleging that Rossdale was secretly the one running Stefani’s clothing and business empire behind the scenes. Whether true or not, the claims kept the feud alive for nearly a decade — the kind of long-simmering entertainment rivalry that shows up on lists like celebs who started out friends and ended up enemies.

“I usually put pants on.” — Gwen Stefani, on the difference between her look and Rihanna’s, HuffPost, 2011

The Rossdale Split and the Lambert Fallout

Stefani’s marriage to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale unraveled after his infidelity with the family’s nanny came to light, a betrayal that left the former couple reportedly unable to be in the same room together afterward. The split cleared the way, eventually, for Stefani’s relationship with country star Blake Shelton — but that pairing came with its own collateral damage.

Shelton’s ex-wife, Miranda Lambert, divorced him in 2015 shortly before he started dating Stefani, and Lambert made her feelings known without ever naming names directly. She famously hung up on a reporter who brought up Stefani, and at the 2017 ACM Awards she referenced her own “heartbreak” in a moment widely read as a pointed nod to the split — a response Stefani reportedly viewed as Lambert still living in the past.

Rihanna, Pants, and a Quiet Truce

Not every tension made headlines for years. In 2011, Stefani told HuffPost that, unlike Rihanna, she “usually puts pants on” — a throwaway line that stirred up talk of an industry grudge between the two pop stars. Whatever friction existed seemed to cool by 2018, when Stefani covered Rihanna’s “Umbrella” during her Las Vegas residency, a gesture many took as an olive branch.

The Harajuku Girls Backlash

Beyond one-on-one feuds, Stefani has faced broader cultural criticism throughout her solo run, particularly over her Harajuku Girls backup dancers. Comedian Margaret Cho didn’t hold back in 2005, comparing the act to a “minstrel show” and calling out what she saw as Stefani profiting off a caricature of Japanese culture. The critique has followed Stefani for years, part of a recurring conversation about cultural appropriation that’s dogged plenty of pop stars featured in rundowns of musicians who aren’t quite what they seem.

Stefani’s still out there recording, still with Blake Shelton, and still fielding questions about a feud with Courtney Love that started when “Hollaback Girl” wasn’t even written yet. Love hasn’t walked back the Rossdale affair claim or the business-empire accusation, and neither side has ever publicly buried the hatchet — which means the next time a reporter brings up Stefani in front of Love or Lambert, don’t expect a warm answer.