Gwen Stefani was busy performing at The voice to releasing standalone singles, performing in Las Vegas, performing with husband Blake Shelton, and even reuniting with No Doubt. What’s been missing for the past eight years, however, has been a new album, but that changes on November 15, when Stefani finally releases her fifth solo LP. bouquet.
Ahead of the album’s release in less than two months, Stefani shared bouquet‘s second single and opening track “Somebody Else’s,” a catchy piece of ’70s AM Gold, contrasts with biting lyrics about past mistakes: “Every day with you is rock bottom/If I let you, you saved me, my God/Look at me blossoming/You’re someone else’s problem.”
As Stefani tells Rolling Stone during an interview before a recording of The voice“Somebody Else’s” was “never intended for this record.” The theme – a “fuck you” almost directed at an ex, similar to the breakup songs on their last (non-Christmas) LP, 2016 This is what the truth feels like — didn’t fit with the rest bouqueta collection of songs about blossoming love.
But after working on bouquet Stefani was drawn to the “idea for this song” by co-writer Madison Love, a veteran songwriter who has worked on songs by Lady Gaga, Camila Cabello and Selena Gomez.
“I get a text from Madison with the start of a song called ‘Somebody Else’s,’ after a series of sessions we did, and in those sessions there’s a lot of confessions and conversations about life and where we are now, where we’ve been,” says Stefani. “She came up with the idea for that song and I was just like, ‘Uh oh, I don’t even know if I want to give energy to that.’ What I kind of realized was that after I wrote the rest of the songs, I felt like I needed to see a little bit of the darkness to see the light and see where I was originally coming from.”
In addition to his work as bouquetThe second single “Somebody Else’s” also serves as the opening track of the album and is a perfect transition to their last album – “The Truth “The record was in the middle of my hell,” says Stefani about the 2016 LP, which was created after her divorce – about her new phase of life with Blake Shelton.
“To a lot of people, eight years probably seems like a long time, but for me it was eight years of healing, eight years of transition, it happened really quickly,” she said. “It’s interesting that this song became (the new single) because the rest of the record has nothing to do with that subject matter.”
The new single is not the only thing that is deceptive bouquet: Despite the cowboy hat on the cover and the fact that the album was recorded in Nashville by a top-notch producer (Scott Hendricks) with an all-star band of Music Row musicians, Stefani insists she didn’t go in the country direction. “It’s not a country record,” she says.
Instead, bouquet is packed with ’70s pop-rock radio gems, channeled through the prism of Nashville, but still authentically Gwen. “It’s all the stuff I listened to in the station wagon on the way to church,” Stefani says of the album. “Yacht rock, although it wasn’t called yacht rock back then. The music I listen to today should reflect that album.”
The desire to make a cohesive – and focused – album with only 10 songs also inspired the title. “I wanted it to be a big statement, and that’s why I feel bouquet is a truly perfect title,” Stefani said. “It’s like each song was handpicked with a special meaning.”
The floral motif — long a common theme in Stefani’s music, dating back to the lyric “Born to blossom, bloom to perish” in her first solo single, “What You Waiting For?” — recurs in the music, with song titles like “Marigolds,” “Empty Vase,” “Late to Bloom” and “Purple Irises,” the first track Stefani wrote for the album and a duet with Shelton inspired by their shared love of gardening.
“Of course he has some hobbies that are very different to mine – I’m a bit of a makeup girl – so in many ways we’re completely opposite, but we have so much fun working in the garden together,” she says.
“Purple Irises” also released Stefani from a creative slump in which she was trying to “compete with her past a little bit and take a step back” – a reference to one-off singles like “Slow Clap” and “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” – which, along with “crazy hectic life and the pandemic,” accounted for the long wait between albums.
“It felt like I was constantly repeating myself,” Stefani said of the false starts. “It just never clicked and it didn’t even inspire me, so at some point I just wrote a song called ‘Purple Irises’ and it felt like, ‘Now it’s my turn.’ I felt like I’m in the zone, that’s it.”
Years ago, while walking in Oklahoma, Stefani saw a bunch of purple irises growing on a nearby, long-abandoned property. “We picked them and transplanted them, and then all these years later, you see that they’ve overgrown our yard,” she says. “They’ve survived so much without care. It’s interesting to see how something so beautiful can survive crazy weather and survive being ripped out and transplanted. It symbolized so much of what we’ve been through in our lives, and that’s how this song came about.”
For Stefani, it was a year of reflection: her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new edition this year and – for the first time in nine years – Stefani was back on stage with her bandmates from No Doubt for two acclaimed, triumphant performances at the Coachella Festival.
“It was magical, it was more than anyone could have imagined. It was like a big wave of love came over me,” Stefani says of the reunion concerts. “It also felt like I was riding bikes with the guys. We hadn’t really spent much time together in the last nine years, and it felt like old times when we got back together. There was so much love, and it showed how much of an impact we had.”
That influence has inspired a younger generation of fans, like Olivia Rodrigo, who performed at Coachella with No Doubt. “It was a huge affirmation and inspiration. It was incredible,” Stefani adds.
For Stefani, however, it hasn’t been a perfect year: Her and Shelton’s garden at home had a “really bad year” in which “everything went wrong.” The irony isn’t lost on the singer: “I’m making an album,” she jokes, “but my real garden has been so crappy this year.”
