On Wednesday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the late-night host quizzed Gwen Stefani on her earliest musical influences and asked whether she and her boyfriend, Blake Shelton, shared any crossovers when it comes to their preferred music genres and artists.
The 48-year-old singer revealed that she introduced Blake, who was born and raised in the small town of Ada in south-central Oklahoma, to the ska and reggae music scene via a personally curated playlist, though admitted that he rarely ever hits the play button on it.
“I did make [Blake] a ska, like, reggae playlist for valentines, like, a couple of years ago but he doesn’t really listen to it that often.”
While it is no secret that Blake idolized Billy Ray Cyrus in his younger years, Gwen opened up about how she discovered underground music and quickly became “obsessed” with British band Madness following her brother’s recommendation.
However, in spite of their obvious musical differences, the songstress said that she and her country singer beau both enjoyed listening to “yacht rock ’70s love songs.”
“Blake is like a musical juke box, and he knows so much music, and I think the one place we cross over is that whole, like, yacht rock ’70s love songs. When I was like ‘Yeah, Bread is one of my favorite groups ever,’ he’d be like, ‘What?! I thought you were like a rock/ska girl.’ [Actually] he didn’t even know what ska [was].”
After speaking about her idols growing up, the “Hollaback Girl” singer shared a surprising fact about one of her own superfans as she revealed that her boyfriend had previously dated someone who used her face as wallpaper inspiration.
“[Blake] did tell me that he dated a girl for like three months that had my face all plastered over her whole bedroom. So, that’s kind of weird, right?”
On reflection now, Kimmel agreed that it must have been a strange situation, but thought it would be fun for Stefani to pull her own prank by collecting photos of Shelton’s ex to plaster all over her bedroom walls.
“Oh my god, that’s so gross,” the musician replied, laughing at the suggestion.
While Blake’s fanatical former flame remains anonymous, Stefani will soon have the opportunity to meet some of her other supporters as she has a 25-show residency, dubbed “Gwen Stefani – Just a Girl,” beginning on June 27 at the Zappos Theater in Las Vegas.
“You know what’s amazing is, when you go through your life and you’re just me, you don’t really think about it much,” the multi-platinum recording artist told Kimmel of her interactions with fans.
“But going on tour and then you see the actual humans that bought the music and lived through my life’s journey, that’s when you really feel like ‘Wow! It’s all over the place.'”
Stefani has Nevada shows scheduled for June, July, and December of this year and February and March of 2019.