Gwen Stefani opened up to Drew Barrymore about feeling riddled with insecurity about her appearance as a middle schooler in Anaheim, California.
The 55-year-old music artist — who is married to country singer Blake Shelton — stopped by the talk show to promote her new album Bouquet.
Explaining what inspired her song Pretty, she said, ‘I was looking back in my life, at all of the photos, like physical and inner beauty of myself. I was thinking about eighth grade, I’m like staring in the mirror in the gym, right, like by myself going, «Am I cute? I can’t tell.» You know when you’re trying to figure out if you are or not?’
The No Doubt frontwoman then explained she was evaluating the throwback snapshots to determine when she felt ‘the prettiest’ and when she liked herself ‘the most.’
She pinpointed: ‘It was right when Blake started loving me.
‘I wanted to write a song about that, because when you actually feel love for the first time, they reflect you. You can see yourself in them.’
Gwen Stefani opened up to Drew Barrymore about feeling insecure when she was a middle schooler in Anaheim, California
Gwen pictured with brother Eric Stefani in 1983
Stefani previously described her relationship with Shelton, who she met while they were both judges on The Voice, as a ‘miracle.’
After her heartbreaking divorce from ex-husband Gavin Rossdale in 2015, she wasn’t sure how to move forward.
And she felt protective of their three sons — Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10 —after their split.
In an interview with People, the singer shared: ‘The last four years of my life, I got engaged, then I got married and started my life over. Something that I wanted since I was a little girl is to be married and have this love that I saw my parents have and have babies.’
The Hollaback Girl hitmaker and her ex-husband dated for six years before tying the knot in September 2002.
Referring to her 13-year union with Rossdale, 59, she added: ‘That dream was completely ruined; it was crushed, and I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and make a new dream.’
‘God putting Blake in my life was just that miracle,’ she said about their love story, which started later in 2015.
She recalled: ‘Especially growing up with this perfect example of love between my parents. They met when they were 15, and they fell in love, and then they had us (children), and they made us feel like we were everything to them.
‘And when you have a family and it’s the opposite of that, it breaks up… I didn’t know what to do or how to protect my children. And I’m still working on that.’
The 55-year-old music artist stopped by the talk show to promote her new album Bouquet. Explaining what inspired her song Pretty, she said, ‘I was looking back in my life, at all of the photos, like physical and inner beauty of myself. I was thinking about eighth grade, I’m like staring in the mirror in the gym, right, like by myself going, «Am I cute? I can’t tell»
Gwen has been married to country singer Blake Shelton since July 2021; pictured in May
Stefani is mom to three sons – Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10 – she shares with ex-husband Gavin Rossdale; pictured with Shelton in May 2023
Stefani also gushed over her calling as a singer-songwriter, explaining she has a ‘responsibility’ to ‘share’ her ‘gift,’ despite being busy with raising her brood.
She said: ‘Where does the inspiration come from? Where do these words come from? They come to me, but they’re given to me. So I feel like it’s my responsibility, whether I have children or not children, to share that.
‘It’s a gift to me that I’m sharing with people. And I definitely think that there’s certain songs that they don’t mean the same thing to me as they would mean to somebody else, because nobody’s in my brain or in my heart or in my soul.’
‘They’re going to have a different experience through the song,’ she added about the listeners’ relationship to her music.
