With the release of Kelly Clarkson’s 10th studio album, Chemistry, it’s a good time to take stock of the singular path she’s carved. After all, her longevity was far from a given just over two decades ago, when she became a pop celebrity.
Clarkson burst onto the scene as the victor of American Idol’s first season in September 2002. She had triumphed largely on the strength of her balladry, and her first single, the double A-side “A Moment Like This” / “Before Your Love,” consisted of two power ballads. It was obvious that she had pipes — a harbinger of Idol trends to come — as she had nailed Aretha Franklin and Celine Dion covers during the competition. But in the grand pop-music scheme, this quality alone isn’t necessarily distinctive; too many singers have had big voices and small careers.
Yet her sophomore album, the aptly titled Breakaway, from 2004, marked Clarkson as someone who couldn’t be summarily dismissed. The album was stuffed with hits, including “Behind These Hazel Eyes,” “Because of You” and “Walk Away.” And then there was “Since U Been Gone,” a pop-rock take on the familiar grunge format of quiet-verse-followed-by-explosive-chorus that would become a template for many other mainstream pop songwriters and performers.
The song also laid down the foundation for one of Clarkson’s most enduring subjects: a broken heart that leads not to maudlin sentimentality but to grit and persistence. She has gone back to this well several times over the course of her career, and it is the dominant theme on Chemistry, which was largely inspired by her divorce. (You could look at it as joining Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed and Adele’s 30 in a trilogy of recent albums by female solo artists exorcizing the implosion of a relationship.)
Clarkson released other successful albums between Breakaway and Chemistry, including the angsty, artistically ambitious My December, from 2007, on which she co-wrote every song, and the mega-hit Stronger, released in 2011. They cohere into a body of work that has earned her both critical and commercial success: three No. 1 albums and 11 Top 10 singles in the U.S. — including three No. 1 pop hits — plus three Grammy Awards.
Even more impressive, perhaps, is the way she has expanded her stylistic range to become a rare figure in a fractured American landscape: the well-rounded, big-tent entertainer. Linking Los Angeles, Nashville, New York and points in between, Clarkson can do pop and rock, country and R&B, summer hits and Christmas chestnuts. She has topped Billboard’s pop, adult contemporary, adult pop, country and dance charts. She has covered hundreds of songs on the Kellyoke segment of her syndicated daytime talk show, including the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?,” Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately,” Tegan and Sara’s “Closer,” Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor,” Dwight Yoakam’s “Fast as You,” Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” and Charli XCX’s “Boom Clap.”
That’s a list diverse enough to give any listener whiplash. Most striking is that Clarkson never comes across as a scattered dilettante but as a versatile and musically curious interpreter. Going through the Idol grind means you have to be comfortable singing different types of songs, and that’s a skill she has never lost. She has actually refined it into an art form.
It has been said that a key to Clarkson’s early success is that she was an accessible, relatable option at a time — the early 2000s — when the pop queens were the seemingly unapproachable divas Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. In contrast to them, Clarkson was a folksy everygal — a quality that has somehow endured despite her success.
Her musicality is a big reason she has remained at the top. Clarkson has flawless technical control — you always get the sense that she could let it rip a lot more than she does — and she follows a song’s melodic line like a sports car hugs the curves of a road. Her confidence in the middle range, which has only improved with age, feels downright luxurious, and she has an unerring knack for storytelling.
This has helped her adapt to different styles over the years while maintaining artistic coherence: Piece by Piece, released in 2015, had a dance-pop vibe; two years later, Meaning of Life explored soul and R&B, with a particularly vibrant performance on the sumptuous title track. It’s telling that while she is open to collaborations, for the most part she has not relied on the rotating teams of interchangeable songwriters and producers that have become the norm in big pop. A notable recent exception is Meaning of Life, though even that record feels handcrafted rather than like the result of chainwork.
On Chemistry, Clarkson is back in the songwriting credits, and the album offers a sample of her ecumenical style on a fairly pared-down scale. “Red Flag Collector,” for example, starts off like the theme from a spaghetti western scored by Ennio Morricone, with a trumpet and a saloon piano, yet it still manages to be her show through and through. Guests of note include Steve Martin playing the banjo on “I Hate Love” and the percussionist Sheila E. on “That’s Right.” Among the invited songwriters is Mozella, whose many credits include Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” and who first collaborated with Clarkson on Piece by Piece. She turns up on the midtempo “Down to You,” as does the pop savant Carly Rae Jepsen for “Favorite Kind of High.” On that song, Clarkson enthuses not so much about being really, really into someone, but about the concept itself: “I wanna feeeeeeeel high,” she sings, climbing into her upper register to emulate the heady feel of a crush. No wonder the song has a David Guetta remix.
Those tracks are the most upbeat on an album that is essentially somber. The opener, “Skip This Part,” sets the tone (“If I could escape all this gossip and shame, oh I would”) and is quintessential Clarkson vocally: It feels big while retaining intimacy. Elsewhere, she drops multiple references to the hardships of the past two years: “And I get sad and I feel broken” (“High Road”); “Your insecurity was the death of you and me” (“Me”); “You were my Rock Hudson / It was real, but it wasn’t” (“Rock Hudson”). “Mine” mentions the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is about the end of a relationship.
And yet Clarkson never gets sappy. She is not the kind to bask in misery; she uses all her feels as motivation to pick herself up. You can sense the tide turning on “I Hate Love,” in which she is able to poke fun at the mess emotions create for us: “I hate love / And The Notebook lied / It’s Complicated is more like what happened / So you can keep Gosling and I’ll take Steve Martin.” The song has a wonderful singalong-in-the-car catchiness, and what’s great about Kelly Clarkson is that she can make us feel as if we’re going on the ride with her.
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