Gwen Stefani’s had it up to here – and in her next video, she’s going to show just how upset she can get.
Since “4 in the Morning” is one of the rare glimpses into the singer’s inner life on her latest LP, The Sweet Escape, the
video, which was shot Friday in Los Angeles, won’t feature a lot of bells and whistles – it’s just Stefani raw.
“I just really want to focus on the lyrics,” Stefani told MTV News late last month, “and not so much on the styling or anything. It’s just really more about the emotion of the song. It’s going to be one of those videos that everything happens on-set, really.”
Stefani reteamed with frequent collaborator Sophie Muller for “4 In The Morning,” but in keeping with the not-so-much-styling ethos, the clip will look and feel more like the bed scene from No Doubt’s “Underneath It All” than Stefani and Muller’s last excursion, “Wind It Up” . But instead of rolling around in bed, Stefani is pacing, sometimes singing to the camera, sometimes walking away from the camera, as if the viewer is the unseen lover she’s confronting, asking, “What have we been doing for all this time?” Her mood during this somewhat voyeuristic video will change throughout the midtempo song – from tears to anger to relief – as the argument takes its course.
“It’s a song that really defines a moment for me,” Stefani said, “although I wrote it over several moments in my life. I had originally started it before I got pregnant, and then I threw it away, and then I found it again after I had Kingston, and I started listening to it and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this song is really good!’ ”
Stefani had nearly finished her second solo album when she decided to finish “4 in the Morning,” so she took the melodies on the tape to No Doubt bandmate Tony Kanal to flesh the song out .
“It gives me a little wave of like ‘ooh!’ ” she said, “a little ping in my heart, because it’s my favorite song off the record. I haven’t been able to figure out why exactly, but it’s just one of those songs that I want to rewind and rewind. It’s the one you can put in your car late at night and sing really loud.”
