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We could write an entire thesis about the evolution of Gwen Stefani. Once the coolest woman in mainstream rock-pop as the No Doubt singer with perma-scarlet lips and questionable cultural appropriation, Stefani has spent most of the past decade or so being the doting wife of country singer Blake Shelton and embracing a kind of homey housewife-esque conservatism that left a lot of us wondering what happened to the woman who gave us Tragic Kingdom. Was she always like this and the blue hair and bindi distracted us? Apparently so.
She’s currently promoting two projects: A new solo album, Bouquet, which is getting largely mixed-to-negative reviews, and her involvement with the prayer app Hallow. She ain’t ho hallow-back girl? Sorry, that’s the best I’ve got.
Stefani is teaming up with Hallow for a festive series of prayer and music options, as well as a ‘25-day prayer challenge called Advent Pray25.’ Look, I’m not religious so this is obviously not for me, but it’s a bit odd to have a ‘pay to pray’ app with celebrity content, right?
Hallow was founded by Alex Jones (not that one), Erich Kerekes, and Alessandro DiSanto in December 2018. It quickly earned a lot of investors and raised tens of millions of dollars. Marky Mark did a partnership with them. They also have a ton of celebs on board with their 2024 advent plans, including Bear Grylls, Kevin James, and that one guy who plays Jesus on The Chosen. It gets promoted a lot on Fox News.
Stefani was raised Catholic and she’s never been quiet about her faith, so partnering with a prayer app isn’t all that weird. No, it wasn’t Blake’s fault. But if you, like me, grew up with Cool Gwen, the era of happy homemaker Gwen who talks about how she’s totally Japanese and sings country love ballads with her Sexiest Man Alive (fact-check pending) husband is always going to feel odd. It’s the celebrity version of that cool girl you knew from high school growing up to marry a conservative who posts endlessly on Facebook about wokeness. But with the addition of weird racism.
In their middling review of her newest album, Pitchfork described Bouquet as having ‘the dynamism of an old floor fan […] We’re left wondering where Stefani put the energy that has defined her musical output for the better part of the past three decades.’ That’s what has always stuck out about her evolution to me. Okay, she wanted to settle down with a guy who wouldn’t cheat on her and she wanted something homier. Cool, that’s cute. But did she have to abandon all the stuff that made her so vibrant and interesting in the first place? She’s still a hugely dynamic performer, as No Doubt’s big return to the stage at Coachella proved. That era of the band left its mark on the likes of Olivia Rodrigo.
Swinging from cultural grab-bag and badass woman to a mayo-white blandness and subservience to her hubby was wild, and it feels like she abandoned all the verve and carefree charm that made her so beloved in the first place. Was this really all that was left once you stripped away the cultural appropriation? To once again quote the Pitchfork review, ‘In “Pretty,” Stefani claims, “I never felt pretty until you loved me.” Thirty years ago, the young woman of “Just a Girl” came off as the type to scarf down the singer of “Pretty” without a second thought. This isn’t to accuse her of hypocrisy—everything in both songs can be true, people grow and ideas change—but the choice to position her fealty to her husband at the forefront of every song is at best dull or at worst like ideological regression.’
Stefani can make whatever choices she wants. If she wants to go bland country, sure, why not (and I’m sure she won’t get cruelly labelled an intruder who doesn’t deserve to be in the genre, unlike some major artists who dabbled in country this year.) If she wants to convince people to pay monthly to access prayers with celebrity sparkle then I hope she enjoys herself. But damn, there will always be a small part of me who misses the woman who sang ‘Don’t Speak’ and seemed like she could rule the world.
