Gwen Stefani Once Had to Tell Her Kids That Pharrell Wasn’t Her Boyfriend
Gwen Stefani and Pharrell have frequently collaborated with each other, so much so that Pharrell even helped make Stefani’s terrible dream come true. As many times as they’ve worked together, however, the pair have never been romantically linked. But that didn’t stop Stefani’s kids from confusing the “Happy” singer for her boyfriend.
Gwen Stefani’s sons were already huge fans of Pharrell
Stefani and Pharrell were a perfect match when it came to music. The two have produced some of the singer’s biggest hits together, including “Hollaback Girl,” “Spark the Fire,” and “Shine.” But there seemed to be instant chemistry as soon as the two artists met. In a resurfaced interview with Rolling Stone, Stefani described how Pharrell was unlike any musician she’d met before.
“He was this young little hip-hop guy, rebelliously wearing, like, alligator shirts, and riding skateboards — which was so not hip-hop, do you know what I mean? He was always in his own lane, and that really attracted me. I was quite intimidated by him, because he was so creative and cool,” she said.
Despite the hits they’ve created over the years, however, Stefani asserted that she and Pharrell didn’t have as tight of a bond as some might assume.
“He’s one of those people who always points me in the right direction. It’s not like we’ve ever been that close, it’s just that he’s so intense and he has such amazing advice and he makes you think. Some of the stuff he said to me in my lifetime really made a huge impact, and of course the music we made together is incredible,” Stefani once told The New York Times.
Stefani reflected on a time when Pharrell inspired her to perform soon after her pregnancy to highlight the producer’s influence on her.
“I wrote him [in 2014], because my boys were obsessed with ‘Happy,’ and he wrote me back saying, ‘Do you want to come play at Coachella?’ And I said, well, I just literally gave birth. I stayed up all night thinking, God, maybe if I wore a black jumpsuit. Maybe, I could do it. After you have a baby you so want to get back. The first time I left the house was to go walk onstage and do ‘Hollaback Girl.’ I got a tour bus and brought the kids out to Coachella so they could see I was friends with Pharrell and show off to them,” she recalled.
As big of fans her kids might’ve been of Pharrell, they also thought their mother and The Neptunes rapper were closer than they were. Stefani had to briefly explain to her sons that they weren’t anything more than friends.
“They were such huge fans and I started showing them pictures on the internet,” she once said according to E! News. “They were like, ‘Wait a minute, was he your boyfriend?’ I was like, ‘No.'”
How Pharrell reacted to Gwen Stefani dating Blake Shelton
Stefani would end up famously dating her other Voice co-star Blake Shelton. The two famously met after they went through their own individual divorces, and later bonded over their heartache. Pharrell was more than familiar with both artists. But although he collaborated with them on The Voice, Shelton’s relationship with Stefani caught him by surprise.
“I had no idea,” he said in an interview with Today. “And then Blake sends me a text message, and I’m like, ‘Whoa!'”
But he also described watching Shelton’s bond with Stefani as a very cathartic experience.
“It’s poppin’ off,” Pharrell added. “It’s so beautiful, because being there, I watched both of them go through a lot, you know. You hate to see your friends go through something so heavy, and it’s kind of like a miracle, man – just watching that.”
In hindsight, Stefani was just as surprised as Pharrell was by how compatible she and Shelton ended up being.
“It was the most unlikely situation to ever happen,” Stefani said on The Howard Stern Show about their union.
