Gwen Stefani has been busy, performing at The Voice to releasing standalone singles to a Las Vegas residency to performing with husband Blake Shelton to even reuniting with No Doubt. However, the one thing that has been missing for the past eight years has been a new album, but that changes on November 15 when Stefani finally drops her fifth solo LP, Bouquet.

In preparation for the album’s release in less than two months, Stefani shared the following: Bouquet‘s second single and opening track, “Somebody Else’s,” a catchy slice of 1970s AM Gold contrasted with biting lyrics about past mistakes: “Everyday with you is rock bottom/Leavin’ you saved me, my God/Look at me blossom/You’re someone else’s problem.”

As Stefani tells Rolling Stone during an interview for a recording of The Voice“Somebody Else’s” was “never meant to be on this record.” The subject matter—an almost eff-you directed at an ex, similar to the break-up songs on her last (non-Christmas) LP, 2016 This is what the truth feels like — didn’t fit in with the rest of Bouqueta collection of songs about blossoming love.

However, after working on Bouquet had begun, Stefani was drawn to an “idea for this song” by co-writer Madison Love, an accomplished songwriter with credits on songs by Lady Gaga, Camila Cabello and Selena Gomez.

“I get a text from Madison with the beginning of a song called ‘Somebody Else’s’ after a bunch of sessions that we’ve been doing, and in those sessions there’s a lot of confession and just talking about life and where we are now, where we’ve been,” Stefani says. “She came up with the idea for this song, and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t even know if I want to give energy to that.’ What I realized is, after writing the rest of the songs, you feel like you have to see a little bit of the darkness in order to see the light and see where I originally came from.”

In addition to serving as BouquetThe second single from ‘Somebody Else’s’ also serves as the album’s opening track and is a perfect transition from her last album – ‘The Truth “My album was in the middle of my hell,” Stefani says of the 2016 LP following her divorce — and her new life with Blake Shelton.

“It seems like eight years is a long time for a lot of people, but for me it was eight years of healing, eight years of transition, it went really fast,” she said. “It’s interesting that this song came about (to be the new single) because the rest of the record has nothing to do with that.”

The new single isn’t the only misleading thing about Bouquet: Despite the cowboy hat on the cover and the fact that the album was recorded in Nashville by an A-list producer (Scott Hendricks) with an all-star band of Music Row musicians, Stefani insists she didn’t go country. “It’s not a country record,” she says.

Instead of, Bouquet is filled with 70s pop-rock radio gems, channeled through the prism of Nashville but still authentically Gwen. “It’s all the stuff I listened to in the station wagon on the way to church,” Stefani says of the album. “Yacht rock, even though it wasn’t called yacht rock back then. The music I listen to now, I wanted to show on this album.”

That desire to make a cohesive — and with just 10 songs, focused — album also inspired the title. “I wanted it to be one big statement, and that’s why I feel Bouquet is such a perfect title,” Stefani said. “It’s like every song was chosen with meaning.”

The floral motif — long a prevalent theme in Stefani’s music, dating back to the lyric “Born to blossom, bloom to perish” on her debut single, “What You Waiting For?” — carries over into the score, with song titles including “Marigolds,” “Empty Vase,” “Late to Bloom” and “Purple Irises,” the first song Stefani wrote for the album and a duet with Shelton inspired by their shared love of gardening.

“Obviously he has some hobbies that are very far removed from what I am — I’m kind of a makeup girl — so opposite in so many ways, but we find so much joy in gardening together,” she says.

“Purple Irises” also freed Stefani from a creative rut, one in which she found herself trying to “kind of compete with her past and go backwards” — referencing one-off singles like “Slow Clap” and “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” — which, along with “busy life and the pandemic,” were responsible for the long wait between albums.

“I felt like I was repeating myself so much,” Stefani said of the false starts. “It just never landed and it didn’t even inspire me, so at one point I just wrote a song called ‘Purple Irises’ and it was like, ‘My turn now.’ I felt like I was in the zone, this is it.”

Years ago, while hiking in Oklahoma, Stefani saw a clump of purple irises growing on a long-abandoned plot of land nearby. “We picked them and transplanted them, and all these years later, they’ve taken over our garden,” she says. “They’ve survived so well without any care. It’s interesting to see something so beautiful survive in the crazy weather and be pulled and transplanted. It symbolized so much of what we’ve been through in our lives, and that’s how the song was written.”

It’s been a year of reflection for Stefani: her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with a new reissue, and — for the first time in nine years — Stefani reunited on stage with her No Doubt bandmates for two acclaimed, triumphant performances at Coachella.

“It was magical, it was beyond anything you could imagine. It felt like a huge wave of love crashing down on me,” Stefani says of the reunion performances. “It also felt like I was riding a bike with the boys. We hadn’t spent that much time together in the last nine years, and it felt like old times, coming back together. There was so much love, and it showed how much of an impact we’ve had.”

It’s an impact that has inspired a younger generation of fans, like Olivia Rodrigo, who joined No Doubt at Coachella. “It felt really affirming and inspiring. It was incredible,” Stefani adds.

It hasn’t been a perfect year for Stefani, however: Her and Shelton’s vegetable garden had a “really bad year” where “everything failed.” The irony isn’t lost on the singer: “I’m making an album bloom,” she jokes, “but my garden itself was so bad this year.”