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Gwen Stefani: My Relationship With Blake Shelton ‘Saved Me’

How sweet the sound. In an interview with Refinery29 published on Tuesday, March 15, Gwen Stefani revealed that her relationship with Blake Shelton served as major inspiration for her latest album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like.

Asked about how her country crooner beau, 39, helped influence her new LP, Stefani, 46, said: “I didn’t have any kind of musical direction for this album. Every song was written around emotions. Of course [our relationship] was an influence. Musically, no. Every song was written purely out of whatever my heart was going through at that moment.”

Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani
Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani attend the 2016 Pre-Grammy Gala. Lester Cohen/WireImage

The No Doubt frontwoman went on to explain how her bonding with Shelton over their public breakups — from Gavin Rossdale and Miranda Lambert, respectively — helped her craft her hit “Make Me Like You.”

“I think that when you go through what I went through, or what I’m still going through, you think you’re hopeless. You don’t know what’s going to happen,” she told the website. “You panic. It was a really super-unexpected gift to find a friend, somebody who happened to be going through the exact same thing as me, literally mirroring my experience. I don’t think it’s an accident that that happened. It saved me.”

Shelton and his ex-wife split in July 2015 after four years of marriage. The following month, after finding out in February about his fling with their former nanny Mindy Mann, Stefani pulled the plug on her 13-year union with Rossdale, with whom she has three sons, Kingston, 9, Zuma, 7, and Apollo, 2. She and Shelton started dating a few months later.

After her split from Rossdale, Stefani decided to write the most honest record she could.

“Then we wrote a song called ‘Rocket Ship,’ and that’s when the label said to me, ‘Listen, we think this overall album you’re writing is too personal. We don’t think people are going to relate. You should just put out an art record.’ And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she added. “I’m literally channeling God here. I’m saving my own life with this record and you come and punch me in the face?’ The next day I went in and told those guys, ‘Let’s write the most fucking personal shit, ever — opposite of what anyone would want to hear.’ And that’s when we wrote ‘Used to Love You.’”

This Is What the Truth Feels Like comes out on Friday, March 18. 

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