Gwen Stefani Reveals Why ‘Yacht Rock’ Bonded Her and Blake Shelton When They First Fell in Love (Exclusive)

Gwen Stefani’s new album blossomed from her love story with husband Blake Shelton.

The pop icon, 55, released Bouquet — her fourth solo studio album — on Friday, Nov. 15. Her muse, Shelton helped shape both the lyrical and sonic direction of the project.

“We come from such different worlds. Our musical tastes are different, yet we do come together in this one place: We both love ’70s soft rock and yacht rock,” she tells PEOPLE of her husband, whom she began dating in 2015, before tying the knot in 2021, in a small ceremony in front of her sons Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10, from her first marriage to Gavin Rossdale.

When the pair got together, “We would always play this game, and we would put on a song and say, ‘Do you know this one?’ And it would always be these ’70s songs,” Stefani says.

Bouquet began to bloom after Stefani wrote “Purple Irises,” a love song inspired by Shelton that turned into a duet with the country superstar.

“He loved the song so much, he was like, ‘Save that one.’ I asked, ‘Wait, do you want to hop on the song?’ Because I would never dare ask — he gets so many requests,” Stefani says. “And even after [recording together] I was like, ‘I’m not sure if this is actually working,’ in my mind, because it was so pop, and he’s so not. That’s when I had the idea to send it to Scott Hendricks, who is his producer, who is more old-school, that could be just the sound of a live band playing, really reminiscent of all of that ’70s kind of yacht rock music that we grew up on. And that’s how we cut ‘Purple Irises’ and ended up making a duet.

Since meeting when they were both coaches on The Voice, Stefani and Shelton have recorded several duets together, including “Go Ahead and Break My Heart” in 2016, “Nobody But You” in 2019 and “Happy Anywhere” in 2021.

“We want to do everything together,” she says. “We’re besties.”

The pair also teamed up for the title track of her 2017 holiday album, You Make It Feel Like Christmas.

“I wanted to make a Christmas record my whole life, and Blake was like, ‘Oh, you got to work with this guy Busbee [late music producer Michael James Ryan Busbee]. He wrote that song ‘Try’ for P!nk,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love that song,’ ” Stefani recalls. “I ended up writing my whole record with him. And Blake, sitting like a dumb-dumb in his bus, was the one that sent me the start of [the title track]. I was like, ‘You just sit around writing hits in your bus? You never write, and then you write this?’ Then I ended up writing the rest of the song. It’s so funny, but we love collaborating together.”

For more on Gwen Stefani, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.