“And we’re from two different worlds / But you still call me your pretty girl, pretty girl,” sings Gwen Stefani in her bubbly new song “True Babe,” the pop star’s first release since dropping songs like “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” and “Slow Clap” in 2020 and 2021.
It’s more than just a lyric. Stefani’s newest single draws direct inspiration from her unlikely romance with her country star husband Blake Shelton, whom she wed in July 2021. “Pretty Girl” is Shelton’s nickname for his wife (hers for him is the perhaps less romantic but equally affectionate “Blakey.”)
Stefani set that lyric to a TikTok video over the weekend, compiling a series of clips that show just how well the couple’s relationship works, even though they might be a little bit of an odd couple. Lip gloss meets pick-up trucks in this video, with shots of Shelton using traffic cones as megaphones and a dressed-down Stefani riding shotgun through the fields of Shelton’s Oklahoma ranch. Things start to make more sense at the end of the video when they come together onstage, finding common ground in music.
“When you’re with a guy from Oklahoma who rides tractors and you’re from Orange County but it just works,” Stefani writes in the caption.
The song acknowledges — relishes, even — the fact that, on the surface, Stefani and Shelton don’t seem to have a whole lot in common. She’s a California-born pop and rock monolith who racked up her first years of fame in the late ’80s and early ’90s as the frontwoman for the ska-inflected rock group No Doubt, going on to achieve solo fame in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, Shelton is a country stalwart hailing from rural Oklahoma, who became one of the genre’s biggest stars in the early 2000s but has never made any major ventures outside the country format.
The two might never have met — or even been aware of each other — if they hadn’t both been coaches on NBC’s The Voice in 2014, but they did. As they navigated their respective divorces, the two struck up a friendship that soon blossomed into a romance that nobody saw coming.
It’s not the first time the couple has winked at their differences. In 2021, Shelton and Stefani co-starred in a cheeky Super Bowl T-Mobile ad spot that turns back the clock to their post-divorce days. Stefani lists the characteristics she’s looking for in a new love interest to fellow Voice coach Adam Levine over FaceTime, but thanks to spotty phone service, he mishears her and sets her up with Shelton — who’s pretty much the opposite of everything she’s looking for.
In real life, Shelton and Stefani’s unlikely love has made them one of country’s favorite power couples. Earlier this month, they celebrated two years of marriage.