Fergie says new soul-baring album isn't all about Josh Duhamel

Fergie will return with her second solo album on Sept. 22, eight days after the singer-rapper announced her separation Josh Duhamel after eight years of marriage.

“I’ve just opened my heart on this album,” she told Entertainment Weekly of the themes explored on Double Dutchess prior to her and Duhamel’s announcement. “I’m not holding anything back. There’s the pretty and the ugly; there’s the rage, the sad. All of the things that I’ve experienced in my life, this is the place to put them.”

EW previewed Double Dutchess for the Fall Music Preview issue, and while a number of the songs deal with tumult, the singer-rapper insisted they weren’t all written with Duhamel in mind.

Speaking specifically about “Love Is Pain” — an epic, ’80s-styled pop-rock ballad that sees the star team back up with her “Big Girls Don’t Cry” co-writer Toby Gad — Fergie told EW, “That song is not just about one person. It’s about several relationships in my life.”

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She further explained that “some of these relationships” that inspire her songs “are not romantic at all!”

With collaborator Gad, Fergie said that she dumped out a bunch of notebooks to cull for material. “I had all of these journals filled with tons of raw emotion and he’s one of those people I super trust. He’s like a male therapist for me,” she shared. “I have no problem bringing all my stuff and dumping it on him. He’s like, ‘What do you want to go through?’ And I emotionally spill over.” Laughing, she added, “He’s like a soft blanket.”

For more on Fergie’s new music, stay tuned to EW and pick up next week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly.