Blake Shelton joins his wife, Gwen Stefani, on a new song, “Purple Irises,” out now. Although the two may seem an unstoppable power couple at the moment, the song, from Stefani’s next record, was born at a time when Stefani was questioning a lot, including her security in her marriage to Shelton.
“I had been going through those times where you’re questioning: ‘Oh my gosh, am I just getting older? Am I cute?’” Stefani admits 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.”
Shelton and Stefani met on The Voice, although their professional relationship didn’t turn personal until they were both, ironically, going through their own divorces at the same time. Stefani was formerly wed to rocker Gavin Rossdale, while Shelton was married to fellow country singer, Miranda Lambert.
“It’s an insecurity we both have,” Shelton admits “These are conversations that she and I have with each other: ‘Are you still going to love me when I’m old or if I forget who I am?’”
The premise for “Purple Irises” came from wrestling with those insecurities, finding a parallel in the life they share on Shelton’s Oklahoma ranch.
“Gwen has an incredible sense for planting things: how to grow them and, once it’s growing, how to cultivate it, and when to prune something,” Shelton boasts. “I like to farm on a big scale, like corn or beans, acres at a time. She concentrates more on patches here and there and ends up farming things a little better than I do.”
It’s been a long time since Stefani released a studio album of new material. In 2016, she dropped This Is What the Truth Feels Like, and while she has done other creative projects since then, it took eight years for her to be able to release a new record, no small task for the mother of three.
“I told this to Blake the other day: ‘You don’t understand — to be a mom and a wife and then write a record?’ Everybody might be like, ‘Why did it take so long?’ Well, okay, I want to see you try to find five seconds to get creative,” Stefani reflects. “It’s so hard to squeeze it into the life that I have. And that’s why I think it’s more special than ever. It’s like when someone says, ‘Oh my God, I got to get my hair colored’ or ‘I got to take a bath today’ after just having a baby. That’s what it’s like for me to do music. It’s that selfish — and special.”
Fortunately, Shelton and Stefani couldn’t be in a better place now, both personally and professionally, for both of them, and eager about their joint future.
“The truth is I am in love with my best friend … When you’re in love and have truly aligned values, nobody can get to us. You can say whatever you want to say about our relationship — I mean, a week ago we were getting divorced again or something,” Stefani says, referencing the ongoing tabloid rumors about their relationship status. “It’s just lies. The truth is the truth, and we know what that is. And so that [negativity] would never penetrate just by me being vulnerable and sharing a song that I didn’t write for anybody else but myself and Blake.”
Download or stream “Purple Irises” here.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC
