Ten years after her last solo album debuted and twenty years after No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom topped the charts, Gwen Stefani has a first No. 1 solo album of her own. Stefani’s This Is What the Truth Feels Like debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 this week with 84,000 equivalent album units, 76,000 of them being pure album sales. The achievement puts Stefani in a small club of artists who first reached No. 1 in a group — with 1996’s Tragic Kingdom and No Doubt, in Stefani’s case — and then topped the charts again as a solo artist. Beyoncé, Lauryn Hill, Janis Joplin, and Stevie Nicks are the only other women to have done so. Meanwhile, Rihanna’s Anti, which returned to No. 1 last week, fell to fourth on the charts with 52,000 units, while The Voice winner Jordan Smith’s Something Beautiful made its debut at No. 2 with 54,000 units. In other words, break out the checkered skirts and adult braces, because the ’90s really are back.
