Kelly Clarkson: Stronger

30 October 2011

by Poppy Reid

"Tea is the shit y’all.”

Kelly Clarkson has just fixed herself a cup of tea and is making her way over to a couch in Sydney’s Shangri-La Hotel, hair and makeup artist and manager in tow. In the country for just a few days to perform at the NRL Grand Final and to promote her fifth album, Stronger, it’s hard to believe it was over a decade ago when this ebullient Texan became the original American Idol.

Clarkson, 29 was thrust into pop- stardom overnight when she took out the incipient title in 2002. The ingénue maintained her disposition throughout the past 11-years and now boasts five albums, 59 million records sold, countless accolades including two Grammys and three MTV Video Music Awards, and a labeling as one of the world’s best selling artists. Her rise could be perceived as an interminable record company marketing strategy, but her intransigent nature as Miss Independent (pardon the pun), that has seen her butt heads with canonical figures throughout her career, is enough to believe her dismissal of pop culture fame.

“I’ve worked with a manager, a previous manager,” she says, “Who wanted me to be the biggest star in the world and I said, ‘one problem, I don’t want to be’.”

Clarkson is referring to Jeff Kwatinetz whom she fired in 2007 for trying to mould her into the exact protégé Simon Fuller had intended for all his Idol contestants.

“His goals were different, I’m not Madonna, I’m not Britney Spears, that’s not my goal. I don’t want that kind of pressure put on me because it’s not something I want,” she affirms. “I just want to maintain me and I don’t want to ruin it trying to be somebody else just because somebody thinks I have the capability.”

Clarkson is part fresh-faced American dream, part brutally forthright country queen. She is the product of ten years of sensationalist tabloid interest that she spent every moment shying away from; a dichotomy she says only fuels the press’ need to badger her. “With other people, they’re either getting out of rehab or they date so many people, or there’s drug addictions, or they’re drunk coming out of a club - there’s so much going on with other artists I think I must throw people off their game,” she laughs. “I live in Nashville, Tennessee and in Texas. I don’t live in the natural industry world so I just think people don’t really know what to do with me; it’s weird.”

Media’s inability to categorise her shaded personal life has lead them scrambling at attempts to fabricate her social life. Although Clarkson pointedly refuses to read her critic’s opinions, there have been a few to slip through the cracks. “I learned that on Idol, she says, “not to read stuff ‘cause it’s either gonna give you a big head or it’s gonna make you want to kill yourself.” One particular rumour that did penetrate her bubble-of-steel is also the one jab she takes the most offence to.

“I’m so unfiltered, if I was a lesbian I would be like ‘you know what I’m gay! I’d actually probably have more luck. “I think it’s insulting to the gay community; just because you’re single doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay.”

The track and music video for Stronger’s first single, Mr. Know It All is Clarkson’s retaliation against this. She handpicked magazine clippings herself with titles like ‘Kelly fights with label’, ‘Why so single Kelly?’ and ‘Is Kelly Clarkson straight?’ to make a floor-to-ceiling collage of bad press. “They’re all complete jokes to us, we totally make fun of [the press]... You have to, for ten years it’s been happening.” The rest of the album follows a similar theme where Clarkson questions unlettered opinions over “pop rock with some stank on it.”

She even includes a Bible reference in the track Honestly, where she relates her life to that of Jezebel. “She gets stoned and then Jesus from the Bible says ‘whoever hasn’t sinned then you can throw the first stone’ - This isn’t quite how the quote reads, but whatever,” she adds. “It’s like with Britney especially because the poor girl gets kicked left and right - people are like ‘oh I can’t believe you did that’ but the person saying that probably has a thousand things that they’ve done similar or in the same kind of vein. It’s a song that says ‘ okay cool you can do that, if you can do it honestly’.” 

Having just dropped her fifth album into the clammy hands of her zealots and the trigger-happy index fingers of her critics, Clarkson intends to straighten her blinders and assert her hopes for the album’s future solely on her fanbase.

“I hope that people get inspired from the album,” she says wishfully. “I hope it’s an album that people can turn on and feel good about life.”