Gwen Stefani: Blake Shelton Long-Distance Song Collaboration Brought Them Closer

Gwen Stefani continued her Blake Shelton gush tour this week, this time appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers and dishing on her relationship with the popular country singer. And although she can’t seem to say enough nice things about her co-coach on NBC’s The Voice, there was a time in their relationship when she said she had a moment of doubt about where the two were going with it and whether or not they should even continue seeing each other. But then Blake Shelton wrote half a song and asked her to finish it.

Gwen Stefani told Seth Meyers that things had gotten a little weird between her and Shelton shortly after they had started seeing each other. “It was really weird,” she said, according to Hollywood Life, “because we actually hadn’t been hanging out that long at that point at all and we had one of those ‘Maybe this is a terrible idea, what are we doing?’ [moments]. It was almost like we weren’t even together, but we were breaking up at the same time. It was like scary, and he had gone away and he sent me this song in an email and I was so scared, because at that point I didn’t even know what his voice really sounded like.”

She then added jokingly, “I’d heard him on the show, but I wasn’t paying attention, I was like ‘Whatever, country guy is on. When’s Pharrell coming on?'”

Stefani then told Meyers that she still had doubts prior to reading the email.

“Then I was like, ‘What if I hate this song? Like this is super awkward,'” she continued. “And I opened this song and it was this incredible song called ‘Break My Heart,’ and it basically has these really crazy ’80s chords. It’s really, really good. So he said write the next verse for me, and I was like ‘Oh weird, like this is incredible! I’m gonna be writing with Blake Shelton.’ So instead of finishing the song, I just wrote a verse back to him about where I was at, and then we had this song.”

“Go Ahead and Break My Heart” was then recorded and appeared on Blake Shelton’s If I’m Honest album. The two debuted the duet in May 2016, during Season 10 of The Voice, a season of the show where Stefani did not coach but sat in as an advisor for Team Blake. “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” would go on to become a hit, topping out at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart and No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I21S6BdsZog

Stefani, a successful solo pop artist as well as the lead singer of the enormously successful alternative pop band No Doubt, also told Seth Meyers that singing the song with Shelton has been a cross-over experience.

“And it’s been incredible, because we get to hop on each other’s stages, and like I can be at one of his country shows and come up and sing that song, and then he’s come onto my stage, which is just so bizarre. He comes out there and it’s like ‘What are you doing here? Who are you?’ But it’s been amazing, just cross pollination of music. It’s pretty special.”

Stefani appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last week and revealed another near “deal breaker” in her relationship with the country singer. She said she took him on his first ever trip to Disneyland.

“He won’t do the roller coasters,” she confided (per CNN). “That was literally, like, that was almost a deal breaker for me. I was like, ‘I don’t know.'”

As it turns out, the tall Oklahoman has difficulty fitting into the cars. She said she did finally get him on the Matterhorn Bobsled ride, “but he barely fit inside the little thing.”

She also said her seemingly always confident boyfriend was uncomfortable with crowds. She noted he was “quite miserable when he’s not in the woods or, like, somewhere in camo. He really likes to be camouflaged.”

She added, “He really is a country boy. He does not like going out.”

Gwen Stefani will reprise her role as one of the four coaches on The Voice for upcoming Season 12, sharing the famous chairs with Adam Levine, Alicia Keys, and, of course, Blake Shelton, who returns after having won his fifth competition, coaching last season’s winner, Sundance Head. The Voice will premiere with its “Blind Auditions” on February 27.

[Featured Image by Chris Pizello/AP Images]