Bouquet

Stefani's penchant for appropriate musical stylings has long defined her pop profile, and even when she's turned irreverent or worse, she facilitates a seductive intensity. She's seemingly never been afraid to sound non-native in her music—if anything, it's reinforced her image as a badass disturbance. That vocal intensity comes through occasionally, such as on the first single, “Purple Irises,” a duet with Shelton. In contrast to his robust but straight take, Stefani slightly inverts her voice at the end of their shared lines in the chorus—a sort of squeal or squeal that confirms her as a player in Shelton's court. Otherwise, Stefani assimilates into whiteness without mayo, and her turn to country is far less convincing than recent moves like Beyoncé and Post Malone. At least there's a quip in opener “Somebody Else's,” a “Queen of Hearts” kiss on an ex that causes searing burns (“Now that you're dead to me/I feel so alive”).

Almost all the BouquetHis songs contain allusions to flowers or botany (something Shelton probably noticed when he suggested the album title). Stephanie compares herself to an empty vase, filled with Shelton's flowers. In addition to purple irises, she collects dahlias, sunflowers and roses. Gardens grow, she blooms, life is a bouquet. At the climax of one song, Stefani shouts, “Flowers! Flowers!” The album dies a little every time she finds a new flowery prose to compare to her life. The flowers also suggest a certain traditionalism – this is a record in love with heteronormativity and its trinkets. Stefani describes herself as sparkling like a diamond ring on “Pretty,” and finishes the second verse of “Empty Vase” with this mic: “I know you're going to raise my sons right.”

All this gentle pop swagger is underpinned by Stefani's invocation of some traditional tropes. “I got the faith and you got the patience/I'm driving you crazy, you drive the truck,” he sings on the title track, essentially a response to Shelton's 2017 song “I'll Name the Dogs.” money/You'll be the beautiful one and I'll be the funny one”). In “Pretty,” Stephanie claims, “I never felt pretty until you loved me.” Thirty years ago, the young woman of “Just a Girl” was the model who undid the “Pretty” singer without a second thought. This is not to accuse her of hypocrisy – everything in both songs may be true, people grow and ideas change – but the choice to place her devotion to her husband at the forefront of every song is at best boring or at worst as an ideological regression.

Everything is fine—it's her right to make her own choices and sing about them. There's nothing wrong with love, right? Memoirs have long been a facet of Stefani's output (from her early days as a pop star, she showed how all the attention was affecting her relationship with her No Doubt bandmates in the “Don't Speak” video) and were reliable in advance. her love for love. You can see how making such an album made sense to her. But Bouquet plays out a scenario where happiness—or the projection of it—suppresses one's creative vitality, leaving the artist with very little to say. Every relationship has its challenges, and one would hope that these details could make for stories worth sharing. Instead, Stefani wants us to believe that she has found the simple lifestyle she sang so longingly for. Bouquet it's as weird as it is boring – an album inspired by her real life that nevertheless comes off as soulless.