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Fans have Blake Shelton to thank for Gwen Stefani’s new song, “Pretty.”
The 55-year-old singer shared as much when she appeared on the Wednesday, November 20 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show. She described looking back through photos of herself throughout her life, analyzing her “physical and inner beauty” in those moments.
“And I was like thinking about eighth grade, I’m like staring in the mirror in the gym, right? Like, by myself, going, ‘Am I cute? Like, I can’t tell,'” Stefani recalled, asking Barrymore, “You know when you’re trying to figure out if you are [cute] or not?” This led to her asking herself, “Where am I the prettiest? When do I like myself the most?”
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“And it was right when Blake started loving me,” the mom-of-three concluded. “And I wanted to write a song about that, ’cause when you actually feel love for the first time… they reflect you. You can see yourself in them.”
Speaking of Bouquet — which took four years to make — Stefani told Barrymore, “This record is kind of just a diary of those kinds of little thoughts that I had through feeling love for the first time.”
She explained how important it was to her that fans “hear how far the love grew,” noting that it came after “having to like scrape myself off the ground, and start over again…” adding that it was a “miracle” to be nine years into her relationship with Shelton.
Stefani and Shelton first met in April 2014 while filming The Voice. At the time, Stefani was still married to Gavin Rossdale and Shelton was still married to fellow country singer Miranda Lambert — to whom he was wed from 2011 to 2015.
They ended up comforting each other as they each went through divorces in the summer of 2015, and began dating by November of that year. They announced their engagement in October 2020, and tied the knot on Shelton’s ranch in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, Fourth of July weekend in 2021.
The No Doubt frontwoman was married to fellow rocker Rossdale — with whom she shares sons Kingston, 18, Zuma Nesta, 16, and Apollo, 10 — from 2002 until 2016.