When Gwen Stefani and husband Gavin Rossdale split in 2015, things did not end well, and there were rumors about him cheating with a nanny.
But things are different now.
Happily married to country crooner Blake Shelton, Stefani is able to revisit her past through new music.
The No Doubt singer seemingly takes aim at Rossdale in her fifth solo album but says, despite sharing her truth, she’s trying to protect the three children they share together.
GWEN STEFANI’S EX GAVIN ROSSDALE ADMITS ‘SHAME’ OVER DIVORCE, WISHES THEY HAD ‘MORE OF A CONNECTION’
Stefani said she was raised by parents who displayed “this perfect example of love.”
“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,” she told People magazine. “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.”
Stefani said her sons – Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10 — whom she shares with Rossdale, “know what’s going on in their own family and their own life” ahead of the release of their mother’s very personal new album, “Bouquet.”
“And what’s real and what’s true,” she said.
The album, available Nov. 15, features a song, “Somebody Else,” which was already released. The scathing lyrics seemingly depict a dark, toxic relationship that she was able to escape:
“You’re somebody else’s / And it doesn’t even break my heart / You’re somebody else’s / And I pray for them, whoever they are / Everyday with you is rock bottom / Leavin’ you saved me, my god / Look at me blossom / You’re somebody else’s problem.
“Narcissistic, semi-psychotic / So manipulated I bought it / Every time, but not this time / You gaslit my world, it was burning / Had to leave before it stopped turning.”
Stefani explained that while she’s sensitive to her children’s feelings, she’s also thinking of her fans and the authenticity they deserve with her music.
“I received the songs. Do I sit there in the studio and work on them? I do. But it’s like, where does that come from? Where does the inspiration come from? Where do these words come from? They do, they come to me, but they’re given to me,” she shared.
“So, I feel like it’s my responsibility, whether I have children or not … 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.”
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A year after her divorce, Stefani gave insight into what her split from Rossdale looked like.
“It was the beginning of hell. Like six, seven, eight months of torture, trying to figure out this big secret,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. Although she wanted to “tell everybody” what was going on, she said nothing, mostly for her kids.
“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,” Stefani told People. “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. And God putting Blake in my life was just that miracle.”
She and Shelton connected on the reality competition show “The Voice.” They married in 2021 after a long period of dating.
Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for both Stefani and Rossdale for comment.
