Gwen Stefani's 'This Is What the Truth Feels Like' is caught in chaos
When Gwen Stefani's "Baby Don't Lie" was released in 2014, it was sold as the lead single from Gwen Stefani's third studio album -- her long-awaited return to music, following 2006's The Sweet Escape.
And it was, well, a little disappointing.
Fourteen months later, after she and husband of 13 years Gavin Rossdale divorced, the singer revealed that she scrapped that album and started over completely. "It didn't feel right. I didn't feel fulfilled," she said at the time. "I tried to make a record where I was just kind of involved in ... but it didn't work for me."
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It's a good thing she did: "Baby Don't Lie" has no place whatsoever on This Is What the Truth Feels Like.
That earlier single, which was released a year before the divorce, found Gwen plagued by insecurity: "I don't wanna cry no longer... I need a love that's stronger." (Tabloids reported that Rossdale had cheated on Stefani with their nanny, which she hasn't confirmed -- but also isn't exactly denying.)
But on Truth, that relationship is far, far behind her -- a mere speck in the rearview mirror. Compared to most of Truth, "Baby Don't Lie" is baby soft, its message not nearly as assertive and its words not nearly as sharp.
Where that song finds No Doubt's frontwoman begging for the truth, she dishes it out cold here, delivering what's simultaneously a seething kiss-off and a doting love poem. Gwen's looking back at how bad she had it, which is only made more obvious by how much better she has it now.
The songs on Truth are much bolder in their specificity, too. Her kiss-offs have Rossdale's name etched into them with scissors. Her serenades to Blake Shelton have his name is scribbled in pen, a heart sketched around it.
And while the album could be described as honest, perhaps the more accurate word is frank: She gives us an unfiltered look at what she's been through, but not a particularly deep one. On the Stargate-produced "Asking 4 it," an out-of-place hip-hop track that ever so briefly features Fetty Wap, she says "I don't know where I was, I was lost, I was nothing/ The real version of me, I had never even seen."
So, what's the "real version" of Gwen Stefani? We never really find out. All we know is that she's definitely over the old and head-over-heels for the new. And while Stefani displays some of her sharpest and most biting songwriting here, so much of it is devoted to the man she was with and the man she's with now that it's hard to see Gwen herself.
Stefani has always experimented with drastically different personas, even within the confines of a single album. That continues on Truth, which distances her from the material and prevents moments of genuine revelation -- disappointing, especially for her first album after a 10-year break that's boldly called This Is What the Truth Feels Like.
Still, she's asking us to experience everything from bitter reminiscence to giddy puppy love with her, which can be fun -- even if it feels reactive at times.
Lovestruck Gwen -- the one we saw "The Sweet Escape" -- dominates most of the first half of Truth. The album opens with "Misery," a song about a new love that's as addictive as a drug, with the frenetic highs and agonizing withdrawal that implies.
It's one of three tracks from producers Mattman and Robin, who do the heavy-lifting in the hits department here. "Make Me Like You," also from Mattman and Robin, is equally energetic but in a more carefree way; it's about the giddy phase where the guy in question still a crush, not yet a lover.
"Where Would I Be?" takes place in a reggae-tinged paradise of some sort, where Gwen charmingly wonders, "Where would I be without your love?" It's all very cute until around halfway through, when "Hollaback Girl" Gwen steps in, dropping her whistle only to shout commands like a head cheerleader, or a drill sergeant.
But album closer "Rare" takes us so far into lovesickness that it's hard not to feel nauseous. It opens with the line"You're a sapphire, you're a rolling stone/ You're a sparkle in a deep black hole," and doesn't get much better from there. It's sort of like of Rihanna's "Diamonds" -- but where that single found Rihanna praising herself and her man for their mutual awesomeness, on "Rare," Gwen comes off like a sycophant.
"Red Flag" features the Pseudo-Rapper Gwen we saw on "Now That You Got It," shaking off past mistakes and "what happens when you don't hear what your mother say." It's not reflective so much as it is sneering, like it's being delivered not to a former lover, but a rival cheer squad.
The only respite we get from the push and pull is "Used to Love You," a hauntingly human pop ballad that finds Gwen looking back on a broken relationship with the smallest amount of fondness. It's by far the album's most sober moment, with an emotional post-chorus that Stefani sings like she's fighting back tears.
And then there are the tracks that are neither here nor there. For a song about sexting, "Send Me A Picture" isn't very sexy. "Naughty" is a mess -- sometimes an S&M banger, sometimes a cheer, sometimes a cheeky Broadway number, never once arranging itself into something cohesive.
But it's all part of the process. "Me Without You" is a kiss-off sung whose purpose is not to shame Gwen's ex, but to reassure Gwen that what she's saying is true: "I'm me without you, and things are about to get real good."
Maybe when the chaos dies down a bit, we'll get to see the "real version;" the whole truth.
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