No Doubt Reveal ‘Push and Shove’ Inspiration

No Doubt are picking up where ‘Rock Steady’ left off with ‘Push and Shove,’ combining their early ska influences with reggae, dance hall, pop and ’80s sounds. As awesome as that is in theory, it wasn’t what they had in mind … Because they really didn’t have anything in mind for the record.

Bassist Tony Kanal explained to MTV News, We just make music that we love and we want to play. We get inspired by something, and we kind of go with it. We’ve always been huge fans of ska and reggae music, and when we were making the ‘Rock Steady’ record, we were super into dancehall — we still are.”

Kanal dished that the band’s play bled into their work in terms of their sound, which influenced ‘Rock Steady,’ and subsequently ‘Push and Shove.’ “On the Return of Saturn tour, before we made ‘Rock Steady,’ we were having dancehall parties every night, and I feel that really fueled and fed into making ‘Rock Steady,’ so much that we actually went to Jamaica and recorded with incredible Jamaican producers down there,” he explained. (That may also explain Gwen Stefani‘s eldest son Kingston’s name!) “I think if something inspires us, we go with it, we know when it’s working and we just kind of run with it. It seems to work for us.”

Stefani simplified Kanal’s message. “We don’t know what we’re doing,” she giggled. “Everything’s basically a series of accidents and mistakes.” Thankfully, it works!