Gwen Stefani insists she hasn't gone country, despite new country-adjacent single
Stefani describes her upcoming album, Bouquet, as "yacht rock, though it wasn’t called yacht rock then"
Photo: Mathew Tsang/Getty Images
Everyone from Beyoncé to Quavo and Lana Del Rey to Angel Olsen has been dabbling in country music lately, but Gwen Stefani insists that she’s not hopping on the twangy bandwagon. You’d be forgiven for the assumption; the cover of her recently announced fifth solo LP, Bouquet, certainly looks country. She’s wearing a cowboy hat and everything!
Still, the former No Doubt frontwoman insists that the new album is “not a country record.” Instead, Bouquet is filled with what Rolling Stone describes as “seventies pop-rock radio gems, channeled through the prism of Nashville,” where the album was recorded. “It’s all the stuff I listened to in the station wagon on the way to church,” Stefani told the outlet. “Yacht rock, though it wasn’t called yacht rock then. The music I listen to now, I wanted this album to reflect that.”
Despite her resistance to the country label, Stefani has clearly been influenced by the genre, or Nashville, or maybe a bit by her husband Blake Shelton in the album’s first single, “Somebody Else’s.” The track has echoes of contemporary country outfits like Lady A and The Chicks as Stefani sings vicious lyrics like, “Every day with you is rock bottom/Leavin’ you saved me, my God/Look at me blossom/You’re somebody else’s problem” over a jaunty track.
While the song could be looked at as a big middle finger to Stefani’s ex Gavin Rossdale, the artist told Rolling Stone the track was “never intended to be on this record” in the first place. After the rest of the album was done, co-writer Madison Love sent her the “idea of this song,” and she just couldn’t resist. The rest of the album, however, is all about love. Her last non-Christmas LP, This Is What The Truth Feels Like, was released eight years ago “in the middle of my hell,” the artist said. Now, after almost a decade of healing, she’s back. Just remember: she’s wearing the cowboy hat in a yacht rock kind of way.
Bouquet will be available to stream and purchase November 15.