They really were on the same wavelength. Gwen Stefani opened up about her summer 2015 divorce from Gavin Rossdale in a new interview with the New York Times on Thursday, March 10, and said she bonded with Blake Shelton — namely because he was enduring the same pain during his split from Miranda Lambert.
Stefani, 46, announced her split from Rossdale in early August, two weeks after Shelton and Lambert shockingly announced that they were splitting on July 20. Hours after their statement was released, the country stars’ divorce was finalized.
Us Weekly broke the news last September that the set of NBC’s The Voice was steaming up with a romance between Stefani and her similarly newly-single colleague Shelton, 39. In November, Stefani’s rep exclusively confirmed to Us that the co-coaches were in fact, dating.
“[He] had been going through literally the exact same thing in literally the exact same time frame,” Stefani told the Times in the interview. Of course, Stefani poured her heartache into her upcoming third solo album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, and started collaborating with songwriter Justin Tranter.
“We had anger, we had sadness,” Tranter recalled of Stefani’s song-making process. “We had flirtation, we had sexy, and now we’re madly in love.”
Stefani chimed in that it was “crazy!” She added: “Never in my wildest, craziest dreams would I ever have seen this coming.”
She elaborated to the paper that writing and making new music was cathartic. “It’s almost like one of those movies where they discover they have magic,” Stefani said. “When I was able to first write a song, that’s when I found my whole self.”
Her new album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, drops on Friday, March 18. Shelton’s 10th studio album, If I’m Honest, meanwhile, will be released on May 20.
