Gwen Stefani is opening up about a song that saved her life.
The singer-songwriter and former “No Doubt” frontwoman, in an interview with People published Monday, shared that “she wouldn’t be here” without her hit single “Don’t Speak.”
The 1995 song achieved huge success, earning her a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year and spending 16 weeks as the most-played song in the country after its release. But for Stefani, it was more than a chart-topping hit — it was a lifeline in the form of a melody.
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“That song was written by my brother,” she said, referring to “No Doubt” cofounder and former member Eric Stefani. “He would stay up all night and smoke cigarettes and eat burritos and write.”
But, she added, the original version of the song was “completely different” when he first wrote it.
In a 2021 interview with Variety, Stefani recalled that the original song “put love in a happier light.”
The band’s label, Stefani told People, wanted to change the song’s lyrics. For the rewrite, she drew inspiration from her own personal split from bandmate Tony Kanal.
“It’s one of those crazy rewrites — probably the only one in history ever that actually turned out to be the heartbeat of my entire life,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here without that song.”
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The song became a chorus of strength and survival for Stefani.
“We had been working on that record for so long before it came out,” she told Variety. “So I think when there’s something that honest and real and pure — and not done for any other reason than just to say it for your own heart — then people connect to that”
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Stefani is now married to country singer Blake Shelton. She shut down divorce rumors that surfaced earlier this year, saying she and Shelton are “in love and have truly aligned values.”