After an eight year musical hiatus, Gwen Stefani has officially made her return with her brand new album Bouquet, a country-tinged, rock-infused bundle of 10 personally hand-picked songs.
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While Bouquet “is obviously nothing like the Ska days,” Gwen is so known for, as she previously admitted during a chat with Audacy’s Mike Adam, just last month, the album does draw from the “Punk inspiration of truth, being purely who you are in the moment,” and still has “an edge to it.”
The transition to finding her new lane, while it did occur naturally, didn’t happen overnight. After delving back into the writing and recording process back in 2020, Gwen came to realize she was “trying to start off doing more Reggae and Ska.” Confessing, “It kept not landing, because I think I was trying to repeat myself or compete with myself and that just wasn't the purpose of where I'm, what I was supposed to be doing now, I found that out later.”
Her latest offering, “was more inspired by being in the back of the car, right before I found Ska music, on my way to church in the station wagon, listening to all the songs that were on the radio in the seventies, which was kind of what I grew up in, like when I was a kid,” Gwen shared. “Yacht Rock or Classic Rock or Soft Rock is what I love so much. So this kind of had that inspiration as far as like sonically how this record sounds.”
LISTEN NOW: Gwen Stefani catches up with Mike Adam
Additionally discussing how the music of her youth inspired the sound of her new album and how she went about creating it, during a recent Audacy Check In with Bru, Gwen revealed, “I knew I wanted to make something that I wanted to listen to. The older I get, the more I go back to the songs that I grew up with as a kid… Like anything from Steely Dan, The Eagles, Carly Simon, James Taylor. There was like a lot of singer-songwriters back then… there was no computers, it was just music, organic. So I really wanted to do something in that kind of world.” She also shared that after initially writing and demoing the songs, despite how out of her comfort zone it felt, the final step was to “rerecord the whole thing with a live band in that style.”
LISTEN NOW: Audacy Check In with Gwen Stefani
“This record is kind of a bouquet because it is a combination of the past, the present, and the seed of hope for the future. Each song was sort of individually, finally, chosen for this bouquet, a work of art… It doesn't feel like I'm trying… what I needed to do which was write it,” Gwen previously told Audacy of the brand new album that she’s excited to finally share with the world.
Also delving into some of the album’s tracks during one of her past chats with Audacy, Gwen shared that “Pretty” is the saddest of them all, Revealing some feedback she received from fans that got to hear the record, that said that song hit them the hardest. Which according to Gwen checks, because, “Pretty” is about “not feeling pretty until you’re actually loved, and how beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Gwen shared, noting the track was inspired by “when you find true love.” How, “love is not a visual, love is something that's unseen, it’s felt,” which is why “that song really hits people when they hear it, like in the truth of that.”
Revealing which track helped her get on the right track , Gwen previosuly told Audacy’s Kevan Kenney, “I finally wrote ‘Purple Irises’ and that was crazy,” says Stefani, “because I went in the room with this young girl,” an L.A. artist called Nico, whose mom used to listen to No Doubt. “It's just so interesting to meet a girl that's an artist, a songwriter, that's so confident and so open to letting me be myself, and it was just like a safe place with her. When we wrote that first song together, I was like, ‘OK, she's letting me have space in the room.’ It just landed finally, and I knew sonically where I wanted to go.”
LISTEN NOW: Gwen Stefani talks 'Bouquet' with Kevan Kenney
Check out the entire tracklist and listen to Bouquet, below. Available to purchase HERE.
Gwen Stefani - Bouquet tracklist:
1. Somebody Else’s
2. Bouquet
3. Pretty
4. Empty Vase
5. Marigolds
6. Late To Bloom
7. Swallow My Tears
8. Reminders
9. All Your Fault
10. Purple Irises feat. Blake Shelton