Gwen Stefani Reveals She ‘Wouldn’t Be Here’ Without This Song — That the Label Made Her ‘Rewrite’ (Exclusive)

Gwen Stefani is looking back on her musical legacy.

In a recent interview with PEOPLE, the pop icon says she wouldn’t still be here today if it weren’t for one special song: “Don’t Speak.”

“That song was written by my brother [No Doubt cofounder and ex-member Eric Stefani]. He would stay up all night and smoke cigarettes and eat burritos and write,” Stefani, 55, says of the career-making hit, which appeared on No Doubt’s 1995 album Tragic Kingdom. “It was completely different when he wrote it.”

When the band played their new material for their label, “They said, ‘We love the chorus. You should try to simplify the verses,'” Stefani recalls. “He sat at the piano with me and goes, ‘Doo, doo, doo,‘ and he started with this super edited version of the melody of the verse. Tony [Kanal, No Doubt’s bassist] had split up with me, and I was about ready to die, and I wrote the words.”

Looking back, “It’s one of those crazy rewrites — probably the only one in history ever that actually turned out to be the heartbeat of my entire life,” Stefani adds. “I wouldn’t be here without that song.”

No Doubt assembled in Anaheim, Calif., in 1986 with Stefani as lead singer alongside Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young. After most recently going on hiatus in 2015, the two-time Grammy-winning band reunited this past April for a special set at the Coachella music festival in Indio, Calif.

“We worked so hard, and we had so much chemistry between us, and we weren’t trying to ‘make it.’ Every time we went to the studio, it was like us procrastinating from real life to do what we were passionate about,” Stefani recalls of the band’s ’90s breakthrough. “That’s why I feel like the music that we were making at that time was so unbelievably pure.”

The band launched to mainstream fame with Tragic Kingdom’s lead single, “Just a Girl,” in 1995.

“’Just a Girl’ is one of those miracles because I didn’t write it for anyone to hear. I was literally expressing what I felt at that point in my early twenties,” Stefani says. “And it went from the girls looking at me [and] competing or ‘What are you doing up there? How dare you try to be a girl and be onstage?’ to they were my girls; we were one. I always thought I would [outgrow] it, but it almost feels more relevant than it ever has. And it’s such an innocent reflection on finding your own identity through your sexuality — or just thinking, ‘Where do I fit in?'”

Nearly three decades later, Stefani still finds solace — and joy — in songwriting.

“I love writing songs. That’s everything to me,” she says. “If I want to feel like I have any kind of purpose or any kind of value or anything, it’s about writing a song. That’s where I get my fulfillment.”