No Doubt Play the Hits but Focus on Superfans at Las Vegas Sphere Residency Premiere: Concert Review

As No Doubt ticked towards the end of the first night of their Las Vegas Sphere residency on Wednesday with “Just a Girl,” a period-perfect hit that’s become a generational touchstone over the past few decades, lead singer Gwen Stefani put a nostalgic cap on the evening.

“I wrote this song out of pure innocence in a time where I was just becoming aware of myself and my surroundings,” she told the 20,000-odd fans in the audience. “I always thought I would grow up too much to sing it and it would be out of style. But you tell me if it’s still relevant or stylish. It’s up to you guys.”

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The response to such an era-defining hit was, of course, rapturous. But No Doubt’s inaugural Sphere performance wasn’t about picking the low-hanging fruit of a greatest hits show, or trying to reclaim past glory. Instead, it was a deep-dive into their history as a band, a look at the grind and sweat that went into building out one of the most unlikely but consummate groups of the 1990s and 2000s, a group that not only wove itself into the fabric of popular music but helped define how it would evolve as the sound of millennium-era pop dovetailed with the grunge, rock and ska of the time.

No Doubt, — Stefani, bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young — has reaffirmed their standing over the past few years, most notably with a stellar appearance at Coachella in 2024 and, subsequently, the FireAid concert intended to raise funds for those affected by the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles early last year. The time for a tour was, frankly, perfect after their pair of Coachella performances, when they towered over the newer acts that populated the bill with reflective yet propulsive sets, walking away with one of the most lauded slots of both weekends.

Instead, two years later, the quartet descended upon Las Vegas for their first residency in the city, spanning 18 dates through mid-June. It makes sense: All of the members are in the mid-to-late 50s, and the stability of a residency is far more appealing than the gruel of touring. And for a band of this stature, the expected route is to bank on hits, and hits alone. It’s become de facto for veteran artists who have taken over the cutting-edge Sphere space, as acts like U2 and Backstreet Boys have staged residencies that breathed life back into a city powered by gambling but more recently driven by live entertainment.

No Doubt, however, made their intentions clear from the start, to stand as a review of their beginnings and how it shaped who they have become. As the audience filed into the Sphere, the inner dome was plastered with early-era photos of the band and fliers from their first shows, like the Mod Expo III in 1987 or Roxy in 1989. (Want to feel old? Tickets for the latter show were $15 apiece.) The table was set for the performance, which was clearly about celebrating the trials of the come-up and the glory of the pay-off. There was much of both, but it was preferential to the former — the songs that weren’t released as singles but were championed by fans, those who clamored to be at the front of the ticketing queue for the first of No Doubt’s real shows in years.

Stefani herself acknowledged those fans several times throughout the two-hour set, assessing just how much the audience wanted to be there. And with that came a set that kowtowed to those fans, the ones who valued the album tracklist more than the singles that eclipsed them. And that’s fine, from an experiential perspective. But after Coachella setlists that laid out their greatest successes in succession, it felt less like a victory lap than it did a concerted return to their native Orange County, when they played in garages and front yards. (They replicated this by rolling footage on the Sphere screens of them, as adults, playing in these spaces during “Spiderwebs.”)

That much was evident by the first run of tracks — “Tragic Kingdom,” “Excuse Me Mr.,” “Different People” and “Total Hate ’95” — all songs that have been canonical for decades but perhaps less familiar to the average No Doubt fan. Then came a spate of those tried and true touchstones, spanning “Spiderwebs” and “Hey Baby” to “Bathwater” and “Ex-Girlfriend.” The mixing of the more obscure with the prevalent soldiered on; for every “Don’t Speak” and “It’s My Life,” there was “Trapped in a Box” and “End It On This.” And again, for the superfan, this was a dream come true. For the rest, in Vegas, it felt a bit disjointed.

What kept the momentum pushing forward was the connective tissue between the quartet. It’s been at least a decade since they’ve regularly played shows together, notably due to Stefani’s rise as one of the most powerful pop stars of the early aughts. But they genuinely seemed to be having fun with one another as Stefani traded off dance moves with Kanal and traipsed about the stage. No Doubt has always been predicated on having a good time, even when their songs addressed the heavy emotions lingering among them, and there’s no question that their foundation is still strong, more than three decades after their formation.

It should be noted that they, at times, made the most of the Sphere setup, which requires meticulous planning and grand vision. The seats in the Sphere vibrated as animated figures thundered across rollercoasters, and a yearbook appeared on the screen showing old photos of the band members during their cover of Talk Talk’s ’80s hit “It’s My Life.” But the most effective moment came during “Simple Kind of Life,” a mournful tune about the regret that comes with a relationship’s demise. During the performance, the screens lit up behind the band, with a colossal Stefani peering in on a smaller version of herself, envious of the contented life she’ll never have.

It’s in those human moments that Stefani and her bandmates showed that there’s more than just the sheen of their shiniest hits. No Doubt is a band that has amassed so many smashes over the decades that it’s easy to forget how hard they worked to get them, along with the songs that didn’t achieve the same heights. For a group that’s endured this long to the point that they can instantly sell out nearly 20 destination shows, that accounts for something, or in this case, everything.

No Doubt may not have put together a set that’s going to please everyone, but it tells the story of who they are without ignoring the parts of the sum. That much is a testament to who they are, and what they’re still capable of achieving.