Gwen Stefani is happily married to Blake Shelton now, but there was once a time when she didn’t think their relationship would get off the ground.
The No Doubt frontwoman, 55, admitted that she was initially hesitant to start a romance with Shelton, 48, when they first connected on the set of The Voice in 2015.
“We had just met, and it was chaos. Both of our lives were in complete turmoil, all over the ground. Nothing could save us at that point,” Stefani told People in an interview published on Monday, November 25. “There was a point where I was like, ‘I can’t even talk to you. This is insane. I already have enough problems. This is not happening anymore. We’re not going to text or nothing.’”
At the time, Stefani had recently split from Gavin Rossdale, whom she wed in 2002. The former couple share sons Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10.
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Shelton, meanwhile, had just announced his divorce from Miranda Lambert. The two country superstars tied the knot in 2011 after five years together.
Despite the upheaval in their personal lives, Shelton wasn’t discouraged by Stefani’s hesitation — and eventually won her over using music.
“I think he really wanted to impress me, because he doesn’t really write songs as much as he used to,” Stefani recalled. “And I love writing songs. That’s everything to me. If I want to feel like I have any kind of purpose or any kind of value or anything, it’s about writing a song. That’s where I get my fulfillment.”
The duo then began work on their first duet, “Go Ahead and Break My Heart,” which they debuted on The Voice in May 2016. They’ve since collaborated on several other songs, including “Purple Irises,” which appears on Stefani’s latest album, Bouquet.
In April, Stefani revealed that she wrote “Purple Irises” while dealing with some doubt about where she stands with Shelton.
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“I had been going through those times where you’re questioning: ‘Oh, my gosh, am I just getting older? Am I cute?’” she recalled to Nylon. “In my own relationship, even though I know the truth of what’s happening today, you still create drama in your own mind about your insecurities and what might happen. I was in that phase of the relationship with Blake and getting paranoid.”
The phrase “purple irises” was something she’d texted herself because she thought it would make a good lyric. She and Shelton, who wed in 2021, had discovered the flowers growing on Shelton’s Oklahoma ranch, and they became a reminder for Stefani to stop worrying so much.
“The truth is I am in love with my best friend, and all this s— I’m thinking of in my brain, that’s all it is — I’m overthinking,” she explained.
