Gwen Stefani gains a creative lease of life from heartbreak once again
Divorce from her husband of 13 years came at a moment of great personal doubt for the American singer, but she willed herself to transform her ‘darkest hour’ into art
Shortly after tickets went on sale for her 2016 summer tour, Gwen Stefani was buckled in next to James Corden for an instalment of the US talk-show host’s chatty Carpool Karaoke. About a minute in, Corden addressed the subject that has launched a thousand comments: Stefani’s age-defying beauty.
Seated inches away from the camera in the intimate confines of Corden’s SUV, Stefani was, of course, dolled up for network TV, with lips that looked like she’d kissed a fire engine on a hot summer day set off against milky skin unmarked by time, tabloid turmoil and a trio of boys born since her last solo record a decade ago.
Album reviews: The Filthy Tongues, Gwen Stefani, Charles Bradley, Autolux
But it was more than that. Stefani, 46, seemed to glow in a way that had nothing to do with a L’Oreal contract, a radiance that illuminated her from the inside out.
“My life blew up. After that I kind of started falling in love, and then I wrote a whole record about that,” she tells Corden. Then, with a broad, luminous smile, she revealed her No. 1 beauty secret: “I’m writing music that’s about happiness and truth.”
Stefani is undertaking a 27-city US tour supporting her latest release, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, a deeply personal album that debuted at No. 1 and includes hit singles Used to Love You, Make Me Like You and Misery.
It’s been a year since Stefani filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years, Bush vocalist Gavin Rossdale, after months of tabloid conjecture about a Rossdale affair with the couple’s nanny.