Gwen Stefani was all-in when she visited The Tonight Show on Monday night, reworking her greatest hits in a country style with Jimmy Fallon and talking about how intimidating The Voice set is.
Back on the show as a coach for season 19, Stefani said things are definitely very different this time around due to the pandemic, especially without a live audience.
“But it was weirdly okay, you can really hear the music, it’s very intimate, the reality part feels even more real because there’s nobody there, so we just are us,” she said, calling the set more “relaxed” but also a bit anticlimactic when the coaches are freaking out about a performance in an empty studio.
Asked what she thinks about host Carson Daly’s latest claim that this is the best talent they’ve seen so far, Stefani laughed and said he might actually be on to something.
“I feel like it’s because so many people are paused in their life that they have time to try out,” she said, sharing her theory on the “really talented” crop of aspiring stars. “It’s very intimidating as a singer to be sitting between Kelly Clarkson, who is just like incredible and John Legend, who actually invented music and then Blake Shelton, who is a country music jukebox!”
Gwen also hung around long enough to give her greatest solo and No Doubt hits a country makeover. With Fallon geared up as long-haired country bumpkin Buck Pinto in a fake infomercial, Stefani served up some hits from the album Gwen’s Gone Country. Which is why you had her trading in ska pop and belly shirts for a cowboy hat and an embroidered cowboy shirt for a twangy, fiddle-spiked run through “Don’t Speak,” a yodeling “Spiderwebs” and a way down home “Hollaback Girl.”
Though she seemed right at home in her country digs, Stefani also talked about how weird it is that her duet with Shelton, “Nobody But You,” is up for a CMT Music Award. “It’s really weird,” she said. “I definitely bounced in different genres through my career and it was easy, it was natural and this was one I never would ever imagine it would happen.”
Stefani also described how weird it is to think that No Doubt’s breakthrough 1995 album, Tragic Kingdom, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. “It’s such a weird record, those songs don’t fit in anywhere in this world yet so many people connected to them,” she said.
Though she and Shelton have been a couple for more than five years, the singer was a bit coy on Monday morning (Oct. 20) when Today Show co-anchor Hoda Kotb revealed that she googled their names and the results included “Gwen and Blake married” and “Gwen and Blake engaged.”
“So, what’s happening with the wedding?” Kotb asked. “Oh, that’s a really good question,” Stefani, 51, laughed. “Well, the good news is that we still like each other a lot. That’s good. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens, you know what I’m saying?” Though the rumors persist, the couple have never confirmed if they are engaged or if they plan to marry.
Watch Gwen on The Tonight Show and Today below.
