Kelly Clarkson's path to stardom is the stuff of modern legend. The pop star may be on the verge of releasing her tenth album, chemistry while simultaneously hosting one of today's most beloved talk shows, but she's been America's sweetheart since the day fans first met her.
In May 2002, a fresh-faced, 19-year-old Kelly showed up in Dallas to audition for a brand new reality show called "American Idol." She belted out Madonna's "Express Yourself" and Etta James' "At Last" in a homemade outfit she'd crafted from an old pair of jeans, claiming, "I'm gonna be a fashion designer if this doesn't work out." Just before she received a golden ticket from judges Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell, the show's narrator offered a fortuitous prediction: "call it a hunch, but we don't think Kelly is gonna need that plan."
Over the course of the next 13 weeks, the singing competition became the surprise hit of the summer, and its millions of viewers fell in love with Clarkson's bubbly, infectious personality and unforgettable voice. She was crowned the very first American Idol on Sept. 4, 2002 — but her journey to superstardom had only just begun.
Clarkson's winning prize included a recording contract with RCA Records, and her debut album, Thankful, arrived a short seven months after she clinched the "Idol" crown. Her coronation single, "A Moment Like This," and the LP both shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200, respectively. The album's lead single, "Miss Independent," also became a Top 10 hit and earned the newly christened star her first Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, proving the reality competition was merely a launchpad for the long and acclaimed career ahead (From Justin to Kelly notwithstanding).
While Thankful showed Clarkson's potential as a recording artist, her 2004 followup Breakaway turned her into a superstar. Though it only bowed at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, the album contained a veritable parade of hits — from the Avril Lavigne-penned title track and "Behind These Hazel Eyes to " "Because of You" and "Walk Away" — not to mention "Since U Been Gone," which remains one of her signature songs. Breakaway also took Clarkson from GRAMMY nominee to winner, as she took home Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Since U Been Gone" at the 2006 ceremony.
Now, how does one follow up a pop album that enthroned one of the biggest pop stars of the 21st century? By taking a hard left turn and leaning into a brash, more alt rock-oriented sound. Clarkson's third full-length, My December, was a jarring change of pace for many fans — just take one listen to the biting kiss-off of lead single "Never Again" — but it was a choice she had to fight hard to make. Despite the fact that she'd had a hand in writing half the songs on Breakaway, as well as "Miss Independent" and three other tracks on Thankful before that, RCA fought Clarkson over the creative direction of My December.
She publicly butted heads with CEO Clive Davis after the album's release, with the legendary record producer later slamming the project in his 2013 autobiography. Clarkson issued a public response defending My December and revealed her bad blood with Davis actually dated back to the time she played him "Because of You" — one of her most autobiographical and vulnerable songs, which is still her biggest streaming hit to date.
"I cried because he hated it and told me verbatim that I was a s—ty writer' who should be grateful for the gifts that he bestows upon me," she wrote at the time. "He continued on about how the song didn't rhyme and how I should just shut up and sing…But I continued to fight for the song and the label relented. And it became a worldwide hit."
For her fourth album, 2009's All I Ever Wanted, the star returned to a brighter, more pop-friendly sound, yet the trouble behind the scenes continued. Going into the writing process, Kelly had just one request: not to work with producer Dr. Luke, who was credited as a co-writer on both "Since U Been Gone" and "Behind These Hazel Eyes," again. But RCA had other ideas, and essentially forced her to collaborate with the embattled superproducer on lead single "My Life Would Suck Without You."
"I'm not gonna lie, I was totally bawling on the phone with my manager at the time," she recounted years later on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast. "And you know, you're essentially powerless unless you say — like I had before — 'No, I'm not gonna do this.' And then they sit on your record, your tour suffers, your sales suffer, everyone suffers because of me, because of my decision."
In the face of a seemingly lose-lose choice, Clarkson made the best of a bad situation and completely rewrote the song to say exactly what she wanted. Though her songwriting went uncredited, for Kelly, it was more important that she weathered the drama with her integrity intact. And her resilience paid off: "My Life" scored her another No. 1 Hot 100 hit, and All I Ever Wanted became the singer's second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.
In 2011, the superstar released her fifth album, the aptly titled Stronger. Though radio trends were shifting with the start of a new decade (as well as the arrival of a new generation of pop stars, like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber), Clarkson hewed closely to her trusty pop-rock roots on the project — a decision RCA didn't seem to have a problem with. "This is the first record that my label and I have agreed on everything," she told The Guardian upon its release. "I'm crossing my fingers that there's no more drama."
Greatest Hits – Chapter One, a compilation to mark 10 years since her "Idol" win, followed a year later. On "Catch My Breath" — one of the record's three new songs — the star encapsulated the hard-won truths she'd gleaned from the previous decade, and revealed how they'd left her wiser, stronger and more empowered. "I've spent most of my life/ Riding waves, playing acrobat/ Shadowboxing the other half/ Learning how to react," she sings. "I've spent most of my time/ Catching my breath, letting it go/ Turning my cheek for the sake of the show/ Now that you know this is my life/ I won't be told what's supposed to be right."
In 2013, Clarkson kicked off her second decade in the spotlight by marrying Brandon Blackstock, a successful music manager who also happened to be the stepson of Reba McEntire. Weeks after the wedding, the singer dropped her first holiday album, Wrapped in Red. As hinted in "Winter Dreams (Brandon's Song)," a lush love song penned for Blackstock, their marriage would inspire much of Clarkson's future music — for better or worse.
By 2016, Clarkson delivered the final album under her contract with RCA. Recorded while she was pregnant, Piece by Piece was presented loosely as a concept album, exploring new chapters of maturation in the singer's life — like the birth of her first child ("Heartbeat Song") and making peace with her childhood trauma after being abandoned by her father ("Piece by Piece") — through an airy, kaleidoscopic lens that mirrored the set's prismatic cover art.
The emotional title track also served as a powerful counterbalance to "Because of You." On the ballad, she laid bare the stark differences between her negligent father and her husband, singing, "He never walks away/ He never asks for money/ He takes care of me/ He loves me/ Piece by piece, he restores my faith/ That a man can be kind and a father could stay."
"My husband is such a great father. He's not an audience guy — he is onstage doing the work with me…We're definite partners," Clarkson opened up in Glamour at the time. "Sometimes girls with daddy issues don't find men like that! You find men who are all you knew, and I just feel so lucky."
The next few years were a time of seismic change in Clarkson's career, not least because she was finally a free agent for the first time in her career. "It was my first time to pick a label to work with," she said in a 2017 interview with iHeartRadio, adding of her 15 years with RCA, "I definitely didn't get to spread my wings as an artist and really do the albums I was really wanting to make."
Finding a new home at Atlantic Records, the superstar set out to make 2017's Meaning of Life, an album she described as "the record I wanted to make when I was in junior high." Taking a cue from Aretha Franklin's own move to Atlantic in the mid-'60s, Clarkson tapped into a retro-soul sound and gave fans more glimpses of how much her relationship with Blackstock had impacted her. ("When you hold me, I finally see/ When you say love, I know what it means/ I was broke down so long in the dark/ Until you showed me the light, baby/ 'Cause when you kiss me I know who I am/ And when you let me feel it, I understand/ When I'm lost I just look in your eyes/ You show me the meaning of life," she sang on the LP's throwback-leaning title track.)
"It's a grown ass woman's record," she told iHeartRadio. "Because with these same songs, even after winning'Idol,' I would not have made this record, it would not sound like it does now. 'Cause I think with this record, you have to have lived through certain circumstances; I had to've had all those hurdles and all those things to really appreciate the gravity of the situation that I'm in right now, and knowing the difference."
Just four months after releasing Meaning of Life, Kelly returned to reality TV by joining NBC's "The Voice" as a coach. Then in 2019, her empire grew with the launch of The Kelly Clarkson Show. The foray into daytime became an instant hit, also giving Clarkson a platform to prove she truly could sing literally anything, thanks to her daily "Kellyoke" performances at the top of each episode. (The popular segment would eventually birth a 2022 EP of the same name, with the songstress covering everything from Billie Eilish's "Happier Than Ever" and Linda Ronstadt's "Blue Bayou" to Whitney Houston's "Queen of the Night" and "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead.)
However, as her star rocketed ever higher, the bonafide multi-hyphenate's personal life was headed for major turbulence. After eight years together with two kids and two stepchildren, Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020. At the time, the coronavirus pandemic had thrown the world into complete chaos, and though she still had a talk show to host (plus a team of hopefuls to coach on Season 19 of "The Voice"), Clarkson first channeled her heartbreak into, well, more Christmas music.
Released ahead of the 2021 season, Kelly's second Christmas album, When Christmas Comes Around…, is an altogether different kind of holiday party from Wrapped in Red. The album is filled with melancholy (a downtempo "Last Christmas"), wistful longing ("Merry Christmas (To the One I Used to Know)," which she now calls "the saddest song I think I've ever written") and even a dash or two of well-earned yuletide spite ("Christmas Isn't Canceled (Just You)"). But as Clarkson explained in her NBC holiday special that December, the Christmas season really is a time to feel all of your feelings, not just the holly jolly ones.
As the calendar turned a page to 2022, fans expected a proper non-holiday divorce album would be imminent. But Clarkson wasn't about to rush the process, only giving periodic updates that she was hard at work in the studio. In the end, the wait turned out to be nearly three years by the time she announced chemistry at the end of March.
"I wasn't sure I was going to release it, but I am," Clarkson admitted when she broke the news on social media. "This album is definitely the arc of an entire relationship, and a whole relationship shouldn't be brought down to just one thing. So there's the good, the bad and the ugly kinda thing going on in it. Chemistry can be a really amazing, sexy, cool, fun thing. But it can also be very bad for you…I thought it was kind of the perfect title to describe the entire album."
Keeping in line with the idea that the project couldn't be distilled down to a single emotion, she kicked off the rollout with not one, but two lead singles in the form of "me" and "mine." The two tracks are dual sides of the same coin — the former finding a fragile empowerment on the other side of heartache; the latter reveling in the thought of a romantic traitor someday receiving his just desserts.
The album's 14 songs show that Clarkson feels no longer confined — not only by her broken marriage, but also her former label's perception of her place in popular music. Chemistry runs the veritable gamut of emotion and sonic palette alike: "favorite kind of high" is an EDM-laced confection about a passionate love, while balladic opener "skip this part" swirls with despair over a breakup.
Elsewhere, there's "I hate love" a folksy yarn (helped along by Steve Martin's bouncing Banjo) that proves Clarkson can approach the subject of her romantic jadedness with a winking, rage-filled sense of humor. And the Wild West kitsch of "red flag collector," with its whistling, desperado-style intro, saloon-ready player piano and mariachi horns, is equally matched by its truly blistering takedown of the unlucky schmuck on the receiving end of its lyrics.
Though the arc of the album is equal parts harrowing, emotional, reflective, and vengeful, the singer promises she's arrived on the other side — with her integrity and artistry not just intact, but revived.
"I wrote most of these songs at 35,000 feet in the air when it was dark on a plane, taking my kids back and forth, and it was exhausting — emotionally, mentally, physically, all the things — while working, and while processing what's going on and what I'm gonna do," she recently said while teasing the yearning piano track "lighthouse." "I wrote this song and I was like, 'I don't think I should release this. People are gonna be like, is she OK?' And I wasn't — then. But I'm good now."
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