In the 10 years since Gwen Stefani last released a solo album, she has had two sons, returned to No Doubt, become a TV personality and watched as her life “was literally blown up.” In an interview at her Beverly Hills home for an in-depth feature article, Ms. Stefani, 46, spoke candidly (and plentifully) about the circumstances that led her to make her most personal album yet — “This Is What the Truth Feels Like” (Interscope), out Friday — and how spirituality and the guidance of Pharrell Williams have shaped her artistic process. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
On the immediacy of “This Is What the Truth Feels Like”:
“I’m so blessed because I’ve been able to do this process a bunch of times now, but actually not as many as I should have — I haven’t put out that many records in my lifetime, really — but this is the fastest I’ve ever written a record and it’s the first time I’ve ever written a record about being happy and the first time I’ve ever written a record that is in real time. Everything that’s happening, it happened like, right now. The last five songs I wrote in January.”
On the aftermath of learning her life had “blown up”:
“I didn’t know what to do. It was this huge secret, because I was like, wow, my kids. What’s going to happen to them if they find this out? What’s going to happen if NBC finds this out? This is crazy, this is not who I am, this is not my life. And so there was like six months of hell.
“I stayed in this house and tried to figure it out. And prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. And didn’t really do anything. I was like, why do I have to do anything fast? This is a serious disaster. And at one point when my girlfriend was here — Sophie Muller, she’s one of my best friends who I do all my videos with, she’s super creative and talented and super opinionated — I remember sitting there and being so embarrassed that this happened, and feeling like, you know what, I’m not going to look back and go, whoa, my life fell apart. Like I can’t. That’s not who I am. And I was like, I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to prove to Sophie, I’ve got to show someone that this happened for a reason, for me to do something creative.”
On foreshadowing and feeling insecure:
“There was a lot of spiritual exorcising going on back, even before I knew this was going to happen. I look at it like God’s plan, or God’s work for me. ‘Cause it’s too weird, and the older you get the more weird it gets — you see the connections, especially someone like me, where extraordinary things have happened to a not extraordinary person, like a regular person, and it keeps blowing my mind.
“I recorded a song called ‘Baby Don’t Lie’ which was originally titled ‘Baby Don’t Cry.’ I was like, ‘Baby Don’t Lie’ sounds more like something of my story. I wrote the bridge in it not knowing what was to come — subconsciously I knew. I mean, come on, go back and listen to that song. You’ll be like, what the hell?
“In some ways I almost feel like it happened for a reason, for me to write the music, and that is my purpose. And I think that along the journey of being me, believe it or not, you get insecure and you lose your confidence and you compete with yourself.”
On the transition from No Doubt to a solo album:
“I did the ‘Rock Steady’ record, which was a magical time because I wasn’t married yet, I was really free with the writing, the band was very supportive of collaborating outside. It was just one of those prime moments, and it just felt like everything just switched on to something great. And then we decided to take our break, because we just never had. Years and years of never stopping. I was like, ah, yes, my window has come! I don’t even know where it came from. I was so creative and clear about what I wanted. I knew exactly the music I wanted to make, I knew what it was going to look like, I wanted to do this world of Harajuku, and I was just so inspired.”
On spirituality and songwriting:
“It’s not a button you press. I feel like it’s really a spiritual thing, because if you are in the room — there’s not one person in that room that’s not blown away by what’s happening.
“[Returning to the studio to write ‘Red Flag’] I just felt so spiritual. I know that it’s weird to talk about spirituality publicly, because it’s such a personal thing, and I know that some people, it offends them. But I can say my own journey, and what I believe and what I feel and what I’ve seen, the miracles I’ve seen — it’s quite real for me. It was right there in the room. It was magic, and everybody felt the magic of this music being made. It was so pure.”
On her artistic relationship with Pharrell Williams:
“He’s one of those people who always points me in the right direction. It’s not like we’ve ever been that close, it’s just that he’s so intense and he has such amazing advice and he makes you think. Some of the stuff he said to me in my lifetime really made a huge impact, and of course the music we made together is incredible.
“I wrote him [in 2014], because my boys were obsessed with ‘Happy,’ and he wrote me back saying, ‘Do you want to come play at Coachella?’ And I said, well, I just literally gave birth. I stayed up all night thinking, God, maybe if I wore a black jumpsuit. Maybe, I could do it. After you have a baby you so want to get back. The first time I left the house was to go walk onstage and do ‘Hollaback Girl.’ I got a tour bus and brought the kids out to Coachella so they could see I was friends with Pharrell and show off to them. And then I got the call about ‘The Voice,’ and they were like, by the way, Pharrell is doing it. I was like, what? You know what, yeah! I want to do it.”
On Fetty Wap:
“I said, I want to work with Fetty Wap so bad — I want to do something in hip-hop, I want to see what would come out of that. And he’s the only one, his voice is so unique and crazy and my kids are obsessed with him.
“The last song I wrote was the Fetty Wap song. I wrote ‘Asking for It’ for him to be on. Weeks are going by, he’s not responding. Nobody can get ahold of his manager. I was doing a show in Toronto and it was my last day, I had to turn my record in or else it was a wrap. We were calling everyone we knew, Jimmy Iovine, Irving [Azoff] — I was like, if you can just get me on the phone with him I can beg him, we can just be human about it.
“I was about to go onstage and my A&R guy wrote to me, ‘He did it.’ I was driving to the airport and hooked it up to the Bluetooth and I was like, I can’t believe I got Fetty Wap on the record and it sounds so incredible. I have no idea what he’s saying but I don’t care.”
On the future:
“Everyone wants to know, what are you going to do, what’s the future, what do you think? None of us know. Why would you waste your time thinking about that and missing out on this, right here. I really have typically enjoyed this part of the process of putting out music, which is investigating it and thinking about it. Unless you go to therapy in real life, you don’t get asked questions about yourself and you don’t analyze it and think about it. Another blessing of being famous is you get to do this.”
On feeling protective of her “Truth”:
“I feel defensive about the music. Because people make whatever they want up about me whenever they feel like it, which is hilarious to me. But at the end of the day, I’m putting something out that is — I didn’t do it for you, to be honest, I did it for myself, to save myself. I did it because I feel like it was my responsibility, like that is what I was called to do, spiritually, and I’m so grateful for it. But if I put it out there, and someone’s going to analyze it, criticize it, whatever they’re going to do, which they will, it’s almost like I feel defensive like, what are you going to do? I’m just telling you what happened. That’s it. And how can you judge that? This is my life.”
On ageism in pop:
“I definitely thought about it in the last couple of years. It’s a natural thing to think about, your evolution. I had a lyric, ‘Born to blossom, bloom to perish,’ and how in nature you see it all the time. We’re just born to die. You can think of it like it’s a tragedy or you can think about it like, you’re gaining something all the time and you’re losing something all the time, but you’re finding out what is the truth, what is important. You’re searching and it just gets more intense.
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“I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about how I’ve been treated. I’ve been so lucky. I’ve always lived in a man’s world. My opinion counts. I’ve just had a really blessed position, and I’m conscious of it. And there have been moments where I’ve felt the other way.
“I feel like I’m mature enough at this point to understand that everyone is there for a purpose and be open enough to listen to everyone’s opinion and truly step outside of my own selfishness and insecurities and ego. So along the way [making this album] I was checking myself, because I think as you get older and have a longer career, you don’t want to be that person who didn’t listen and got caught up in yourself. You can be that way, especially when you have a lot of success.
“At the end of the day when [the label] wanted me to put 10 songs on the record, I was like, I agree. Those Michael Jackson records are nine songs. Cut out the fat. Give them the best of the best. And I tried real hard. And then I kept thinking, well gosh, these good songs don’t feel as good without those [other] songs. It needs the whole story. So I added 12 and I felt like, oh my God, the story’s there.”
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