“I’ve been waiting and wanting to, but it’s just not that easy.” Gwen Stefani is talking to me about making new music: Aside from a holiday offering, You Make It Feel Like Christmas , in 2017, Stefani hasn’t debuted a full album in nearly a decade. All that time has cloaked Bouquet —her new record, out today—in a lot of mystery, and more than a little anticipation.
“That makes me scared when you say it like that,” she says. In many ways, she’s just as excited and curious about this next chapter in her career as her fans are. “I feel so good to finally have a record that reflects the truth of who I am right this second.
” That truth involved a lot of healing, a major theme of her new music. Stefani has been through it since her last pop release—notably titled This Is What the Truth Feels Like —came out in 2016, ending her 13-year marriage to musician Gavin Rossdale, with whom she shares three sons, and beginning a very public romance with country star Blake Shelton, one of her fellow judges on NBC’s popular music-competition show The Voice . She and Shelton then married in Oklahoma in 2021.
Stefani had planned to put out her fifth studio album the same year—teasing it with a single, “Let Me Reintroduce Myself,” in December 2020—but the project was scrapped. “I describe it like being in a cul-de-sac,” Stefani says now. “You’re driving and then you just hit this circle and you’re like, something’s not right.
” What has since risen from its ashes is Bouquet , an album that combines bold pop songwriting and major hooks with a little yacht rock flare. (Stefani is the queen of genre shapeshifting, after all, having launched her career with the ska-inflected pop-punk of No Doubt in the 1990s before going solo in the aughts, and helping to define that decade’s earworm-y bubblegum pop.) “But in reality, it doesn’t matter the genre, because at the end of the day it’s all about the lyric,” she reflects.
“What’s the song supposed to say and how will the music support that?” For better or worse, she had a lot to write about. Vogue : You say that you did a lot of healing over the past decade. Did the music propel that healing, or is it a result of it? Gwen Stefani: That’s a really good question, because there were so many songs that I wrote that didn’t make it.
So those all are a part of this record too; I had to go through all of them to get to this. I was really selective [about] trying to pick a bouquet or collection of songs that reflected [this theme of healing], which you hit on the head. Everything in my life crumbled.
It was literally the most devastating, like watching a childhood dream just be completely broken. It’s one thing to have a breakup, but to break up a family is..
.. It’s impossible to even wrap my head around it now.
It is so painful and it never goes away. It always hurts. And, you know, to be able to then be handed the gift of love through my new best friend, and to have somebody that can go on this journey with me and help scrape me up off the floor, and be like, no, no, I love you just how you are—real love, not this kind of love I thought I experienced.
Like, true, God-given love—that was an amazing epiphany, because you don’t know until you know, right? You don’t know what you’re missing. So there’s a lot of healing, like you said. And a lot of loving.
You’ve always had this knack for taking these moments in your life and then creating relatable and cathartic music out of them. When did you discover that in yourself? I must have had it [from the beginning]. It’s only now that I can say and I’m mature enough to understand that God does exist and gives each person their own talent and uniqueness.
It’s not conceited to say it’s a gift that was handed to me and I received it. And that’s how each one of these songs have been. It’s not like I come up with the song—I received the song through the spirit.
Like, there’s nothing there and I put the intention out there, like, Gosh, I really wish I could think of something that would mean something, or would make me feel good . The next thing you know, it happens. It’s the most miraculous feeling when it’s happening and you are getting the song and it’s coming through.
It’s like giving birth, it is so beautiful. Bob Dylan talked about something similar in an interview with 60 Minutes , saying his early songs were almost magically written, calling it a “different, kind of penetrating magic.” I’ll tell you something.
When I was in my middle-20s, my brother Eric was the one that wrote all the music. He’s an absolute genius, like, he lives in a different world than we do. He was my hero and my best friend.
Back then, I was passive. I didn’t have any motivations or anything when I was little. I didn’t even dream.
The biggest dream I had was, maybe I could make money and work in the saloon at the Disneyland Hotel. For me, once I wrote my first song, it was kind of like, What? I have wings? I didn’t even know I had them. That’s how shocked I was that I could write a song.
The first song I ever wrote was a song called “Different People.” I look at it now and it’s embarrassing, a little bit, but at the same time, I know exactly what I was talking about. I was writing about my sister; about how different we are as people, but yet we’re the same.
It weirdly ended up on Obama’s playlist at one point. It’s one of those unifying songs. But we all have to suffer, so what are you going to do with that suffering? How are you going to use that as fuel to do something good? At the time we were writing Tragic Kingdom [No Doubt’s third album] , my brother was going through a lot and he was basically quitting the band.
It was devastating for me because all I ever knew was to have him, as well as my boyfriend [Tony Kanal], who I’d been with for seven years. I was so dependent on [Eric] emotionally, and he’s in the band and he was leaving me. So I had two of the only people that I depended on my whole life just going away, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.
I don’t even think I was conscious or thinking about it enough at that time because I was so immature. But now when I look back, I guess what happened was that was when God stepped in and was like, This is what you’re going to do. I know when No Doubt released its debut album, it was considered a disappointment and the band struggled after that.
It wasn’t until Tragic Kingdom that everything aligned. Without those struggles, do you think you would have had the same success? One hundred-percent no. First of all, our first record was, I’m not saying it’s a joke, but we were just so young and we were still learning.
But we had to have those struggles. We had to have that fight, and also, we just got really good while we were doing it. But today, I don’t think people even realize the first singer of No Doubt [John Spence], who I sang with, killed himself.
Then the second singer that sang with me was a guy called Alan Meade, and he got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 15, and then he was gone. We were looking for another singer to sing with me, but we just never found them. You hit all of these obstacles, but just kept on going.
I’m assuming you’d agree that it’s given you a special perspective on The Voice ? You’re looking at some people onstage that were in your position when you really weren’t sure where things were going to go. A hundred percent. Kids come on there and they have no idea of my history.
I’m always sitting there going, “I lived your dream. I can take some of the pain for you.” I say it every season, but I feel so inspired when I’m there because not only do I get to revisit and look back at what I’ve done, but it helps me in a lot of ways—like, for my new music or new things I wanna do.
And when you see [the contestants] blossom a little right before your eyes, and knowing you had that impact, it’s like mothering. It’s the greatest. It sounds like it’s all come full-circle.
Speaking of your evolution, Bouquet has this fresh, singer-songwriter-y sound: in your single “Swallow My Tears,” there’s not a synth in sight. I’m wondering how you got to that point stylistically, and if Blake or Reba McEntire, your other The Voice colleague, rubbed off on you? Looking at my past discography, an album like Love. Angel.
Music. Baby. —I can’t repeat that again.
It would be like double-dipping or triple-dipping. I’ve got to move forward. This has got to be from my heart.
I’m not competing with myself. Once I felt like it had what I wanted to say, I got to go cut this record in the studio with a live band, with live musicians, and everybody there had a reason to be there. Our producer Scott Hendricks got all the musicians together; these guys are [at] the top of their game.
It was very organic. It was very loose. It’s interesting that you essentially had a band of collaborators again, with Scott and writers like Jacob Kasher and Madison Love.
I would never have this record if it wasn’t for each person that pointed me in the right direction and let me be me, and then also took the time to listen and care about me. I think one of the best things is when I’m collaborating with someone with that much talent. Every time I listen to songs, I think about them.
We’re all in this together, and someone like Scott is taking a chance on me. I could cry thinking about it, it’s just crazy and it’s beautiful. In 2021, when Dua Lipa was asked on a podcast what she listens to before hitting the town for the night, she chose “Yummy” from Sweet Escape .
What fires you up before you hit the stage or go out? She did? That’s so funny! Oh my God, I’m going to be so boring. Before I go on stage, I listen to a lot of spiritual stuff, like Rick Warren, or I love Jeff Cavins, or gospel. I listen to all of that because it fuels my soul to say, Let your light shine through me .
Let me be a vessel for you. Because I feel like every time I get up there, I want to be there for my audience, you know what I’m saying? I’m there to give them what they deserve, which is love back for loving me. So it’s an exchange of love.
That’s kind of how I prepare to go out there. This conversation has been edited and condensed..
Entertainment
Gwen Stefani Is Ready for What’s Next
“I feel so good to finally have a record that reflects the truth of who I am right this second,” Stefani says of “Bouquet,” out today.