Gwen Stefani on No Doubt’s Future, Working With Prince
Gwen Stefani wasn’t kidding when she called her new solo album This Is What the Truth Feels Like. It manages to combine upbeat pop with bracingly honest lyrics about her split from ex-husband Gavin Rossdale, the father of her three children.
“Even before I knew that my life would be forever changed and all my dreams would be crushed,” she says, “I was quite desperate to make new music.” She ended up with a flood of inspiration that she compares to No Doubt’s 1995 breakthrough, Tragic Kingdom, written in a similar breakup haze: “I didn’t even know I could write music,” she recalls. “And then my heart was ripped out, and, like, served back to me on a platter. And this album, I feel like it just fell out of the sky. It was a miracle.”
What will it be like to revisit the heartbreak in these songs when you sing them on your solo tour this summer?
I’m not in a different place yet. I’m still heartbroken. You can’t have your family break up and still not be going through it a year later. I was just cleaning out a room in my house before I called you. It’s devastating.
You had another solo album almost done before this one, which never came out. What happened to that?
That was a fake record. I had it, but it never felt right. I had this opportunity to be on The Voice, so it was like, “You’re on TV, let’s put a song out.” But I gave birth, and I was on TV, like, five weeks later. I was still nursing. There was no way!
You worked so hard on the last No Doubt record, and it didn’t connect. Is that band over?
I don’t know what’s going to happen with No Doubt. When Tony [Kanal] and I are connected creatively, it’s magic. But I think we’ve grown apart as far as what kind of music we want to make. I was really drained and burned out when we recorded that album [2012’s Push and Shove]. And I had a lot of guilt: “I have to do it.” That’s not the right setting to make music. There’s some really great writing on that record. But the production felt really conflicted. It was sad how we all waited that long to put something out and it didn’t get heard.
Do you have any issue with the other members of No Doubt working with Davey Havok from AFI?
Of course I don’t care. Those are my homeys from when I was a little girl! I want them to be happy and do whatever they need to do to fulfill whatever creative place they need to fill.
You’ve recorded a duet with [new boyfriend] Blake Shelton. What do you make of the country world?
Being on The Voice helped open my mind to all kinds of music. My parents loved folk and bluegrass – my first concert was Emmylou Harris. And at the end of the day, a song is a song. You can take a country song and make it into a dance track. It’s all about how it’s produced.