Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesIt was only after breaking up with a boyfriend that Gwen Stefani discovered she could write songs. Little did she know, though, that someday divorcing a husband would reignite that similar creative spark in her musical creation process.
"I'm just a regular girl," she said Thursday on Elvis Duran and the Z100 Morning Show. "But what I'm saying is when my boyfriend dumped me, you know, who I thought was the love of my life, I just wrote songs. I started writing songs, I didn't even know I could write a song! And all of a sudden I became empowered, like it became like a wake up! This is my gift, and that's crazy because now I'm doing it again and I hadn't done it in a long time. I hadn't been able to write in a long time."
Gwen, 46, struggled with the writing process prior to the end of her marriage to Gavin Rossdale, 50. "I went into the studio, and everybody knows pretty much what happened to me. I got a divorce or whatever, which completely was not in the plan at all," she said. "At that time, I was like, I wanted to go in and write and I had a plan to make a record, and I made a record the year before really, but I hadn't written it...."
"It's crazy how I just didn't feel comfortable not writing my record, it didn't feel right. It wasn't time!" she continued. "Then all of a sudden I went in and it was one of those things where I had to force myself to go to the studio because I really just wanted to be in bed crying and do what you do when your life falls apart and I didn't...."
But as Gwen told Elvis Duran and the Z100 Show crew, she was "convinced that I had to make something out of this" tough time, so she did. "I went to the studio and started writing," she said. "Well I wrote my first song and it was like a little rosebud just blossoming, and I was like, 'Wow! It's happening I can do this!' I know that every time I go into the studio I'm going to write a song and it's the most incredible feeling."
That song was "Used to Love You" and it changed the course of her whole record. "Once I had that song, all the other songs kind of made sense," she said. "It's just weird—it's a weird journey."
Gwen doesn't know yet when her upcoming album will be released. "There's not a date," she said. "I wrote everything in like 8 weeks...But I feel like I want to write a few more now that I'm into the next phase whatever this phase is, because I want to see what that is."
We think this next phase is dating fellow Voice coach Blake Shelton! Gwen didn't dish to Elvis Duran and the Z100 crew about their budding romance, but she did congratulate her man on being one of CMT's 2015 Artists of the Year with a rather, um, interesting Instagram post...
Because if anybody's gonna appreciate a solid nail art tribute, it's Blake, right?