CBS Sunday Morning (March 20th 2016)
For The Record
MO ROCCA: Gwen Stefani had a very big hit with "Hollaback Girl back" in 2005. Yet, along with the hits, there has been one very big and public miss--a real blow to her personal life. She talks about that and more with our Lee Cowan For the Record.
(Begin VT)
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: Gwen Stefani is, underneath it all, a superstar who doesn't brag.
GWEN STEFANI: If I want to show off, I'd be like--
LEE COWAN: Her collection of awards, including her Grammys, are tucked away in a closet in her Beverly Hills home.
GWEN STEFANI: I thought I had more than that.
LEE COWAN: Oh, yes. You got three. You got three, that's enough.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: After two decades on the charts, Stefani has had the time and the talent to rack up all kinds of recognition. But last year's Grammys were bittersweet. It was the last night the pop star would be truly happy for a long, long while.
GWEN STEFANI: Everything fell apart last February, right after the Grammys day after the Grammys.
LEE COWAN: Day after the Grammy.
GWEN STEFANI: Yeah. I woke up that morning and it was just that was it. It was like my life changed forever.
LEE COWAN: Gwen Stefani's high-wattage marriage to Gavin Rossdale, the lead singer of the band Bush, exploded after thirteen years.
GWEN STEFANI: At that time everything was like I had no skin, I was so raw, you know what I mean? And nobody knew what was happening, and I had this big secret.
LEE COWAN: And the forty-six-year-old rocker, fashion icon and mother of three young boys suddenly found herself at a crossroads.
GWEN STEFANI: I was down all the way, like that's-- you don't go down lower than that, you know what I mean?
LEE COWAN: It's rock bottom.
GWEN STEFANI: It was rock bottom. I was so embarrassed, you know what I mean? I just was like, wow, like I have to turn this into something, like, I can't go down like this. If I can do music, everything will be okay.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: But music hadn't come easily for Stefani of late. A long, frustrating bout of writer's block, she says, had left her musical confidence shaken.
What was it like going into the studio for the first time?
GWEN STEFANI: When I walked in I just said, listen, I just-- I don't care about the charts, the hits, the style of music. I just want to tell the truth and I just have to get this out of me, whatever it is, and I want to write and I want it to be coming from me.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: Her misery turned out to be her muse. Within a matter of weeks, she had written more lyrics than she knew what to do with.
GWEN STEFANI: It was just the idea of sitting at a piano and letting my feelings come out, and it felt so good. It was like, wow, this is all I need to be doing right now. Nothing else feels good but this.
LEE COWAN: It's like the flood gates just opened?
GWEN STEFANI: It was like the confidence just came to me, and it just felt like the right thing to be doing, like it was proactive as opposed to, like, just getting deeper into a hole.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: She was on a roll. But then came a surprise call from her record company.
GWEN STEFANI: They thought it was just too personal, too artistic, and that they didn't think people would relate to it. And it really deflated me. Like, I was like, wow, you guys, you don't even understand what you're doing to me right now. Like, this is--this was saving my life, and now you just punched me in the face, like, for what, for saving my own life? You know what I mean? Like that's how it felt.
LEE COWAN: So how did you bounce back from that?
GWEN STEFANI: I just went to the studio the next day and I said--
LEE COWAN: You just went back?
GWEN STEFANI: I just went back and I was like, let's write the most noncommercial, personal record ever.
LEE COWAN: That very day she wrote the ballad, "Used to Love You."
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: She sent a demo over to her record label, and the phone rang once again.
GWEN STEFANI: It's the first time in my entire career that somebody from a record company called me to say that they thought I had a hit.
LEE COWAN: It's a pretty fast turnaround.
GWEN STEFANI: It was pretty magical.
LEE COWAN: "Used to Love You" became Stefani's first single off her first solo album in a decade, fittingly called "This Is What The Truth Feels Like." It is raw, almost a confessional.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: It's not the first time Stefani has turned to songwriting for therapy. Another painful break up--
(No Doubt singing)
LEE COWAN: --this one back in 1994 from her band's bassist Tony Kanal, led Stefani to write "Don't Speak." It was a monster hit that put her and No Doubt on the musical map for good.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
GWEN STEFANI: I never could understand why I was so unlucky in love. I have so much love in me, and yet I've just had so much tragedy with that. But yet, I've had so many, like, incredible blessings--I mean, how did this happen to me, like, it's crazy.
LEE COWAN: One of those blessings, she says, was her stint on NBC's The Voice.
(Excerpt from The Voice)
LEE COWAN: She sat two chairs away from country singer Blake Shelton. Timing is everything. He, too, had undergone a very public split with his wife, Miranda Lambert, a country star in her own right.
GWEN STEFANI: In all of this craziness that happened, like unexpected horrible-ness, I found a friend that was going through literally the exact same thing as me. And that is a miracle, you know. And it just saved me so much, and I feel so grateful for that.
LEE COWAN: Back in the recording studio, Stefani's collaborators began to notice a change in her mood.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
GWEN STEFANI: And then all of a sudden it was like, hey, what's going on with Gwen? She's so happy.
LEE COWAN: That happiness inspired "Make Me Like You."
(Gwen Stefani singing)
GWEN STEFANI: It was so fun to be able to write about being saved, and be happy about it, and share that joy.
LEE COWAN: She turned it all into an elaborately-choreographed live music video sponsored by Target that aired in a commercial break during this year's Grammys. She admits that she wrote "Make Me Like You" about Shelton, but that's about as far into relationship territory as she's willing to go.
GWEN STEFANI: Look, you can have me say it out loud, or you can just listen to the record. I mean I feel like I did everything right to say I'm not going to let this ruin my life.
LEE COWAN: They don't hide the fact they were couple; they are publicly private. We've seen it all play out in the tabloids, in the sort of over- the-top way these things often go. But she's managed to cope with that, too, by ignoring it.
GWEN STEFANI: Once in a while they'll tap into something that you're, like, wow, really? How could you think that about me? You're wrong. And if I saw you right now, you know, I bet you would never say that to my face.
(Gwen Stefani singing)
LEE COWAN: She has never been a shrinking violent, and in a world of twenty-something pop stars she has remained remarkably ageless. But make no mistake. Gwen Stefani has lived a few lifetimes in the last eighteen months, and has come out on the other side beaming with new-found optimism that's as bright as those signature lips.
It strikes me despite everything that's happened to you over the last year- and-a-half, you almost grateful in a way.
GWEN STEFANI: I feel so grateful.
LEE COWAN: Which I think people would be surprised.
GWEN STEFANI: I'm surprised, you know. Like, I believe there's a master plan for me, and part of my journey and my cross to bear was to have to go with-- like through with what I went through, and I accept it, and--
LEE COWAN: And made something--
GWEN STEFANI: --and I tried to make something good out of it.
(End VT)