The Music Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton Bond Over Is Kind of Unexpected
The stars met on The Voice, so of course, music continues to bring them together.
He's a Country king. She's a pop princess. So what music do Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani listen to together? We'd never have guessed.
After meeting as Coaches on The Voice, the two bonded over a specific musical sub-genre you may or may not have heard of: yacht rock.
Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani bonded over 1970s soft rock
“We come from such different worlds. Our musical tastes are different, yet we do come together in this one place: We both love ’70s soft rock and yacht rock,” Stefani told People. “We would always play this game, and we would put on a song and say, ‘Do you know this one?’ And it would always be these ’70s songs." Stefani says.
They love the sound so much, in fact, that for her upcoming solo album, Stefani turned one song into a duet, and then gave it a '70s-inspired vibe.
“[Shelton] loved the song ["Purple Irises"] so much, he was like, ‘Save that one.’ I asked, ‘Wait, do you want to hop on the song?’" Stefani explained. "And even after [recording together] I was like, 'I'm not sure if this is actually working,' in my mind, because it was so pop, and he's so not. That's when I had the idea to send it to Scott Hendricks, who is his producer, who is more old-school, that could be just the sound of a live band playing, really reminiscent of all of that '70s kind of yacht rock music that we grew up on."
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"We want to do everything together," she added. "We’re besties.”
What is yacht rock?
The term was coined by a web series that premiered in 2005 and is used to describe certain popular soft rock acts that came out of California in the 1970s.
Spotify’s current “Yacht Rock” playlist — which has been saved over 1.5 million times — includes songs like “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers, “Too Hot” by Kool & the Gang, “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John, and “Heart to Heart” by Kenny Loggins.
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton are prolific collaborators
Before "Purple Irises," the pair recorded a number of gorgeous duets together: ''Go Ahead and Break My Heart'' from Shelton's 2016 album If I'm Honest; ''You Make it Feel Like Christmas'' from Stefani's 2017 album of the same name; and ''No Body But You'' and ''Happy Anywhere'' were both released in 2020.
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