PopCrush Nights (March 18th 2016)
Gwen Stefani
[edited version]
I found out about everything in my life, my personal life, went down last February - February 9th. I woke up that morning and everything changed forever. I kind of spent the next few months trying to figure out like what am I going to do, like how can I fix this, you know, whatever you do when that happens. It was, like, really hard because, yeah, you have to imagine in my situation, being that like I have to try and protect the kids and I’m a public person. There’s all these people that know about this crazy life and how am I going to - I just didn’t know what I was gonna do, so I spent a lot of time just really trying to find my faith and praying. I was desperate. And then it wasn’t until June that I went to the studio for the first time. I don’t even know how I survived the session. It just happened and I knew that I needed to do it even though I wanted to be in bed just crying and feeling sorry for myself. I remember driving down on Santa Monica Boulevard just bawling, just talking to my girlfriend going, ‘What am I doing? Like, I’m going to make myself go and embarrass myself in the studio? This is hard enough.’ By going there and doing my first song, it really released something in me and I just knew that that’s what I needed to be doing. You know, it’s a tragedy when your family breaks up and your kids get taken away from you half the time. That’s like, you’re like, ‘What!? I did nothing wrong and now I got this. Like this is crazy.’ But within that, that half the time was, you know, I used that time to heal myself and to write this music.
So when I didn’t have my babies - which I was devastated and am still devastated about - I would go in the studio and write music. I didn’t waste any time. I was like, I would wake up, I would go to the studio, I would pray, I would go to the studio, pray, and every single day I would write these songs. So that’s literally, that’s as candid as I can be about it. I mean, it’s a nightmare and, um, the only good thing that’s come out of it is this music and to be able to like share it with people now. And I know a lot of people go through what I went through. I know that they’re for sure gonna, they’re going to for sure relate to this. And I’m happy to be the person, y’know, to be able to like - I have an outlet. A lot of people don’t have an outlet. So I love to share it, y’know. I have to say, though, I have had so many blessings in my life and one of them being new music, and the other one being, y’know, finding a friend and somebody that helped me get inspired and heal. So the record’s really a lot about happiness and love, and that’s the first time I’ve ever experienced writing a record about that, so I feel real excited about that part of it.
Well, Make Me Like You is - When I heard it, I only heard it a couple of weeks ago and everyone on Facebook’s like, ‘Oh, this is such a cute song. It’s so cute.’ And it’s one of those songs, too, where you really don’t need to listen to the full - You don’t even have to wait until you get to the hook. You’re like, ‘I really like this song. Okay, now I know why she said ‘make me like you.’’
Um, my favorite songs? Uh, I don’t know. I didn’t put anything on there that I didn’t love. I wrote a lot more songs than I put out. Luckily, because I have the Target edition, I got to put an extra four songs out. I think, probably, um, Rare would probably be one of my all-time favorites. That was written the day that I had the basketball game [earlier Gwen stated she wrote two songs within four hours on this day]. I wrote that in like two hours so that was like crazy to me to think that a song that good was written like magically at that point. That was only written at the end of January. So it’s all very fresh.
I love a song called, um, Truth. That one is really special to me as well. But there’s not one song on the record that isn’t directly from God, you know what I mean. Like literally - When you’re making music, you can imagine, like, you have nothing. You have air and no sound, and you have these songs that capture emotions and gives so much pleasure. It’s such an incredible thing to be part of and watch it happen.