Gwen Stefani felt emotionally "dead" during her break-up with Gavin Rossdale.
The 46-year-old pop star was trying to record her new solo album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, while her 14-year marriage to the Bush frontman was collapsing, and Gwen has admitted songwriting helped to ease her heartache.
She recalled: "I went to the studio and I wrote the first song, and it was this really weird drive on Santa Monica Boulevard, crying the whole way, thinking, 'Why am I going to torture myself even more? I'm already dead.'
"But I did it - I wrote a song and it felt so right. It was the only thing that felt good at all.
"That's what this whole record documents - working through it, having faith, believing in myself and wanting to do something about it. And this is the first record I've ever made in real time: Used to Love You came out three weeks after I wrote it."