Gwen Stefani’s new album blossomed out of her love story with husband Blake Shelton.
Pop icon, 55, announced Bouquet — her fourth solo studio album — on Friday, November 15. Her muse, Shelton, helped shape the lyric and sound direction of the project.
“We come from such different worlds. Our musical tastes are different, but we still come together in this one place: we both love soft rock and yacht rock from the 70s,” she tells PEOPLE of her husband, whom she began dating in 2015 before marrying in 2021. in a small ceremony in front of his sons Kingston (18), Zuma (16) and Apollo (10) from his first marriage to Gavin Rossdale.
When the couple got together, “We’d always play this game, put on a song and say, ‘Do you know this one?’ And there would always be those songs from the ’70s,” says Stefani.
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Gwen Stefani’s ‘Bouquet’ album cover.
Universal music
Bouquet began to blossom after Stefani wrote “Purple Irises,” a Shelton-inspired love song that turned into a duet with the country superstar.
“He liked the song so much he said, ‘Save it.’ I asked, ‘Wait, do you want to jump to the song?’ Because I would never dare ask – he gets so many requests,” says Stefani.
“And even after [recording together] In my mind I thought, ‘I’m not sure if this really works’, because it was so popular and he didn’t. That’s when I got the idea to send it to Scott Hendricks, who’s the producer of it, which is more old-school, it could just be the sound of a band playing live, it’s really reminiscent of that 70s kind of yacht rock music. on which we grew up. And so we cut ‘Purple Irises’ and ended up doing a duet.”
Since meeting when both were coaches at VoteStefani and Shelton have recorded several duets together, including “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” in 2016, “Nobody But You” in 2019 and “Happy Anywhere” in 2021.
“We want to do everything together,” she says. “We’re best friends.”
The pair also teamed up for the title track of her 2017 holiday album. You make it feel like Christmas.
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Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton at the ACM Awards in May 2024.
Jason Kempin/Getty Images
I’ve wanted to do a Christmas record all my life, and Blake said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to work with that guy Busbee. [late music producer Michael James Ryan Busbee]. He wrote that song ‘Try’ for P!nk,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love that song,'” Stefani recalls.
“I ended up writing my whole record with him. And Blake, sitting dumb-dumb on his bus, was the one who sent me to the beginning [the title track]. I said, ‘You just sit there and write hits on the bus? You never write and then you write this?’ Then I finished writing the rest of the song. It’s so funny, but we love to work together.”
For more on Gwen Stefani, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
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Source: HIS Education