Gwen Stefani digs into relationships old and new on first album in 10 years
Gwen Stefani has spent her entire career as a pop star writing songs about boyfriend/husband/ex-husband Gavin Rossdale. Even the happy songs weren’t happy: They often carried an undercurrent of suspicion and dread, as if Stefani expected Rossdale might explode their domestic bliss at any moment.
If you believe the tabloids — and Stefani’s dishy, soul-baring new album strongly implies that you should — Rossdale eventually did, taking up with the couple’s nanny and bringing about the end of their 13-year marriage last summer. Stefani’s first solo album in a decade is an examination of the aftermath. It’s the stock-taking after the slow-motion car accident is over and everybody survived. Is it any wonder she sounds so relieved?
“This Is What the Truth Feels Like” is a solid pop album whose occasionally giddy effortlessness belies its herculean task: It makes Stefani, a 46-year-old, divorced mother of three who hasn’t released a solo album since George W. Bush was still president, sound like a credible and contemporary pop star, while always sounding recognizably like the best version of herself.
A team of writers and producers led by Semi Precious Weapons’ Justin Tranter (one of the architects of Justin Bieber’s “Sorry”) took shopworn Stefani-isms — the hiccupy, fidgety, baby-voiced ska rhythms familiar to fans of her flagship band No Doubt, the pop stomp of her solo hit “Hollaback Girl” — and seeded them with subtle EDM and disco-pop flourishes.
It almost always works. Songs like “Where Would I Be?,” a weirdly irresistible mix of “The Sweet Escape”-era Stefani and the Andrews Sisters, rank among her finest. Several stern finger-wags presumably aimed at Rossdale (the spoke-sung “Red Flags” and “Naughty,” similar and forgettable) seem hollow but not alien.
The best thing about “Truth” is the simplest thing: It sounds like Stefani. Like something she actually made. There are no forays into acid house, no DJs or country duets or any other modernizing attempts that are the surest way to make a Gen X diva sound old and lost.
This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 12:22 PM with the headline "Gwen Stefani digs into relationships old and new on first album in 10 years."