I'm Not A Little Girl

Recorded for the soundtrack of The Rugrats Movie in 1998, “I Throw My Toys Around” is actually a No Doubt song written and produced by Elvis Costello.

Lead singer Gwen Stefani and her bandmates wring every drop of unctuous brattiness out of the song, which is clever but slight. You can hear EC’s influence on No Doubt’s sound here, just as you could on their breakthrough record, Tragic Kingdom. Stefani’s multitracked backing vocals to her own lead are straight from Nick Lowe’s This Year’s Model playbook, and they have always worked for No Doubt as well. 

There’s not a ton of information extant about the origins of “I Throw My Toys Around,” but it’s hard for me not to hear some influence from Wendy James’ 1993 album, Now Ain’t the Time For Your Tears. Costello wrote all of the songs for her debut solo outing, with some of them co-written by his then-wife Cait O’Riordan of the Pogues. This song’s also a Costello/O’Riordan co-write so it’s possible to imagine this as a missing cut from that earlier collection of tunes. 

In both cases, Costello and O’Riordan pen lyrics that are designed for a young female version of the Angry Young Man’s own late-seventies sneer, and it comes together in ways that don’t always snap into place. While it’s possible the tone of this song is driven by O’Riordan’s influence, it also sounds quintessentially EC. As you hear Stefani petulantly scowl “I’m not a little girl,” it’s impossible to miss that the words aren’t hers but are co-written and produced by a middle-aged male rock star. 

The lyric is designed to be empowering, but it’s fed through a filter of masculinity, a lyricist observing things he can’t directly understand. You hear echoes of this in later tunes like “Tear Off Your Own Head (It’s A Doll Revolution)” and “When I Was Cruel No. 2.” Can the liberation of young, creative women find its anthems in the songs of a middle-aged man? 

It’s a POV filtered through an unreliable narrator, and while the singer sells the song, its writer’s biases always linger just off-camera.