David Remnick: Way back in 2002, the new show American Idol proved itself in its very first season, yielding a star who immediately became a real American Idol, Kelly Clarkson.

Speaker 1: Hello, Kelly. Hello. How old are you?

Kelly: I'm a big fan of you, by the way.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much.

Kelly: Yes, I'm 20. I just turned 20 this April.

Speaker 1: Oh, happy birthday.

David Remnick: She won the first season at the tender age of 20, and she had hits for years before launching her talk show on NBC in 2019. Clarkson is 41 now and just released an album that deals with the long arc of her relationship and her recent divorce. She spoke the other day with our staff writer, Hanif Abdurraqib, who writes brilliantly on music, and he's passionate about the craft of songwriting and singing. Here's Hanif.

Hanif: Late last year, I was talking to the poet, Ross Kay, and he kept saying that if he were to start a band, he would be a singer and he couldn't explain why, he just kept repeating this phrase, "I just love singers. I grew up loving singers." I realized that I, too, did not have language for this, but I knew, for a fact, that I also love singers. I grew up loving singers. I grew up loving Millie Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Toni Braxton, Mary J. Blige, and on and on and on. Kelly Clarkson is a singer I have loved for a long time.

I didn't watch American Idol, and I have maybe never watched a full season of American Idol so there is a way that I missed the earliest act of her career and came in around what would be considered Act Two, her second album and beyond. What I loved about Kelly Clarkson and arriving to her in this way specifically is that I did not think about the framing of her as a pop star. Kelly Clarkson to me was a rock singer. I thought she was more like Anne Wilson than anything, especially when I began to see her live and her bands were so loud, and she was always leading them, top them, pushing the volume.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: Since U Been Gone

But since you've been gone

I can breathe for the first time

I'm so moving on, yes, yes

Thanks to you

Hanif: And Chemistry, it is an album that details a very public divorce. It's raw, it's beautiful on its face writing that traverses both pain and rage, but also gratitude and pleasure. I was thrilled to talk with Kelly a little bit about the record. Hi, Kelly. How are you doing?

Kelly: I'm so good. How are you, man?

Hanif: I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for making a little bit of time this morning. I'm excited to talk to you about Chemistry, which I'd loved. I'm such a big fan of your career as a writer, not just as a singer. I'm really interested in how you felt your writing evolved on this record. I feel like you've always been a great writer, a confessional writer or a writer who puts themselves first and foremost at the front of their narratives but it also felt like this album, the writing was a bit less metaphorical and more direct in a way. I was wondering how you evolved through the process of writing this record that is maybe the most personal record you've completed.

Kelly: Yes, I think it's easier to hide in metaphors when it's not the biggest thing that's ever happened so it was very hard because I kept trying as well, because I have children. Even whenever I was writing for me, it was therapeutic and I was just getting it out. That was just more out of necessity for me. I think it ended up-- Anytime I try and go back in, because I did quite a bit, actually, nobody's asking me this question, good question. I did try and go back and go, "How can I rephrase that to work?"

Then it ended up being this, I was jumping through hoops to try and make it. It's like, "Everyone's going to know." It's not like whatever I say. Everyone, unfortunately, my life is very public, especially in the rough times. Anything that was already out there, I felt like it was, "Okay, fair game, because the kids are going to probably ask me in the future about that." They're too young. They don't get it. We don't allow them on the internet like that anyway but anyway, so it's easier to write metaphorically when, one, it's like a situation that you're touching on or maybe it's like any time in the past, it's been about a breakup or something.

That's a lot different than a marriage and someone you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with and that crumbling so I think my writing is more mature, I think, just because of circumstance and age, obviously. Because I think overall, if you listen to my first record, even the writing on that with Miss Independent or The Trouble With Love Is, those are songs that are not necessarily immature, they're right for that stage, right? They're right for that person's age at that time, right? But yes, no, it was impossible to write metaphorically for me because it was therapeutic.

This is what I mean when I'm singing it. I think that it started to become something I would want to listen to. I remember when I write Jagged Little Pill and I was like, "Think late junior high," is when that came out for me.

Hanif: That's the Alanis Morissette record. We're about the same age, so that came out for me also in junior high.

Kelly: Yes, it was just so honest and no like-- I mean, yes, there are metaphors here and there just because she's clever and incredibly intelligent, but for the most part, you knew exactly kind of what was going on. That honesty was something that I latched on to. Even Mary J, she was one of those people, too, that I felt like when I listened to. Anytime you hear her sing, too, there's just a certain honesty, Bonnie Raitt like that. Anyway, I don't know. I think there was no option. When you're that sad and broken, I think it just has to come out how it comes out.

Hanif: Yes. What I love about this album, but I think actually what I think shows an arc of your work but really comes to light most ferociously on this album, is that it's not just a sad album, but I actually think it's reductive to call it a divorce album, or at least it feels that way to me because there's a lot of tenderness on it, and I think it balances-- I think it's sequenced wonderfully because it balances sometimes anger, sometimes pleasure, sometimes a wistful longing. How did you get to a place where you could honor the full arc of a relationship when it would perhaps be easier to make a straightforward, somewhat salacious divorce record, especially due to the public record?

Kelly: Definitely easier to write those songs, yes. It's out now, but this literally was real time. This record was written years ago. Most of the songs on this record were written right when everything was happening. Even when it comes to Down To You. Down To You on this record was written while I was married.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: Down To You

And now I know you'll never change

I don't want to be your friend

Can't do that again

I can't dance with the devil on my back

Need somebody who can meet me where I'm at, these

Dark days are knocking on my door

Kelly: Some of them were real, real-time. Then also, I think when you're in a relationship and it takes you that long and you knew for a while, you ride that roller coaster. The reason why you go back and you try again is because you love this person and you remember all those moments like Magic, the song on the record.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: Magic

It's magic (it's magic), my love (my love)

The way you feel (the way you feel)

It's magic (it's magic), my love (my love)

Kelly: Or Chemistry or any of those-- Favorite Kind of High, like remembering like, that song was really important for me to have on the record because, Favorite Kind of High is like the beginning.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: Favorite Kind of High

Take me home tonight, kiss me how you like

I've been waiting for you

I know you ain't shy, well, neither am I

What you waiting for? Yeah

There's no escaping your ghost of love

Kelly: The reason why the record does have, it's not just a divorce album, is because in real time, that was me being indecisive of like, me and I have kids. Like, do I want to do this? Can I try again? You're literally seeing me go through, okay, but remember, it's like this, and da-da-da. Honestly, it's a very good example of how unhealthy we can be in relationships because if something's bad for you and it's a cancerous environment, it's nothing as good left to hold on to, you should walk away. I think we get-- It's that thing, especially in a relationship.

I think we have habits or tendencies, be it childhood trauma, be it whatever, that you sink back into. That's why you go back down and then you go back up and then you go back down. You're seeing me go through what I'm going-- I'm writing these songs, figuring out what the hell I'm going to do. That's like what is happening during this album.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: Lighthouse

I need a do-over, how did we end up this way?

I'm so confused, lover, did I mistake love and pain?

Ain't got no shine left, I couldn't hide it

Kelly: I think Lighthouse-- I don't think I know because I remember writing that song. That was the moment when I was like, "All right." Lighthouse was one of the last ones I wrote for the album, and it was for me, like we're both drowning. We're nowhere near each other. We can't see each other. I got to swim to shore at some point, or we're both going to die out here.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: Lighthouse

Like a wave, you're always crashing into me, crashing into me

And these days are harder than they used to be, and they used to be

No shooting stars can fix what we aren't, and

What good's a lighthouse when the light is burning out?

Hanif: One thing that I really loved, and to talk about your writing technique and ability in watching your writing evolve, is it's become more playful, I think, and more tongue in cheek. For example, one of my favorite songs on the record is Red Flag Collector, which is not at all funny, I think in a traditional sense but it is fun. I was wondering if just spending time in front of people, interviewing people, talking to people all the time on the talk show, if that has impacted your songwriting and made it this joyfully conversational, available for playful detours, these kind of things.

Kelly: You know, I never really thought about that, but it most definitely has affected me. I mean, I bet I'm like that at dinner now too with people. I bet I'm like, and people are like, "We're not on stage, you're not interviewing someone." I also think just age, right? I think that that plays a part too and it depends on where you are in life. That's a huge thing to happen to someone. I think we hear it's a statistic. Chances are, half the time or probably more than half at this point, you're not going to make it in marriage. I know the statistic is there, but it doesn't make it less impactful.

It doesn't make it less dramatic and enormous in your life so I think also just something that happens that's so huge, there's nowhere to go, but really super honest, and also if you use humor as a healing mechanism, then you've got to laugh. It's like, "Oh my God, we're talking about towels." My heart is broken on the floor and we're talking about who gets the towels. I can't have that conversation. I can't actually. Then you have to go to humor because if you don't go to humor, you go to a very, very dark place. I just think things happen and you're just like, "What?" You're just taken aback.

Hanif: Heartbreak is a kind of absurdity and the logistics of heartbreak present a real absurdity, but also falling in love is equally a bit absurd. Maybe not in the same way, but it presents this idea of knowing what the damage could be, knowing the statistics of the potential for heartbreak, falling in love presents a kind of absurdity. I'm curious how your writing of an interest in love songs has changed as you've aged, not even just with this specific dislocation of a divorce and still finding but throughout your whole career. This isn't obviously, not your first foray into either breakup anthems or love songs but I'm curious how that approach of writing the love song has changed.

Kelly: I've always been, since I was a kid, this person that if the reality is not great, I will create it in a form. If your home life isn't great, you'll create something in your head to heal or deal. Not heal. Deal. I don't know. Because I don't want to be the person that's like, "I don't believe in it." Because I definitely do. I don't hate love. I know the song is on there, but I don't hate love. Love has been a hard go for me. Whether it's parent or friendships even sometimes, I've only been in love like that with my ex but it doesn't seem to work out so great for me so then you have to go.

"Well, what's wrong with me?" At some point, you're like-- Then that's what therapy's for. Then you find out too, like sometimes your personality, you attract these certain people. Writing love songs is hard for me. It's never been easy for me. I think whenever I write a love song there's always like that elephant in the room of sadness as well.

Hanif: I really love that you mentioned Mary J. Blige, because I think that both of your approaches, which I really admire, not only in my own writing but in the things I consume, I like a love song that is a bit skeptical. I think Mary J. Blige, for me, when I was young, was the real gold standard of writing a skeptical love song.

Kelly: I've met her too, and first of all, so cool and so sweet, but also very honest in person, very vulnerable in person, which is cool. No, I think that's a very good example. Her songs are great, but her voice, Mary's voice, it's an incredible thing to have hope, sadness, determination, and constantly hurdling like you're having a fight. She just has all these things in her tone that you can't teach someone. That's a life. That's a life that's been living that and that's why it sounds like that.

Chris Stapleton is a person like that too. That just has this natural gift for whatever's been going on in his life, but it has molded this sound that even when they're singing a love song, it sounds like heartbreak.

Hanif: Right. Speaking of sound, I've seen you live through a few different eras. When you were coming out of Idol, I was much younger then, but it still never really struck me the way that you were boxed in, the way that one gets boxed in when coming out of Idol is a clearly a pop idol. I was really thrilled seeing you during some of these areas where you're playing with very loud bands like All I Ever Wanted, My December, these eras where it seemed like you were more like Anne Wilson, fronting a very loud rock band.

Kelly: You just read my mind. I was like, "Well, I'm a huge Anne Wilson fan." I think it's all my influences. That's the thing. People always tell me, even with the karaoke part on the talk show, it's like, you all are just seeing that and being like, "Oh, now she's dabbling." It's like, no, no. A lot of us artists, we all grew up listening to different things. I love Aretha Franklin, I love Annie Lennox, I love Reba McEntire, I love Aerosmith, I love Mary J. Blige, I love Toni Braxton. I could sing all that. I know all the rifts. Mariah, Whitney.

I grew up listening to Guns N Roses. Loved. I'm a decade younger than my brother so a lot of his influences musically when I was really little and we all still live together, I heard that. Whitesnake, all that stuff. That's why ACDC usually, I open every show with that. I've always, and I think all artists, we're like a culmination of all these people that have inspired us and that forms our sound. That, for me, has been the greatest. I love interviewing and I love what the show because I just love talking. I love people. Obviously, always had a gift of gab, which got me in trouble in high school, but it's working now.

I love that part of it, but also, the main part for me as an artist is getting to show people like, first of all, highlight all this music that maybe you've never heard, like new indie artists too, or older artists maybe that the younger people watching haven't heard of. It's also just being able to display what I want my radio station to sound like. You know what I'm saying? I want to hear all this stuff in one place.

Hanif: Kelly Clarkson, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with me this morning. I really appreciate it. I love the record. Thank you for your work.

Kelly: Yes, thank you so much.

MUSIC - Kelly Clarkson: That's Right

I ain't your little girl

You're confused and I've lost patience

Take your hurtful words

Speaker 1: Kelly Clarkson, the deluxe version of her album Chemistry comes out this weekend. She spoke with staff writer, Hanif Abdurraqib.

They won't stick and I won't chase them

I won't have your ghost

Running all my revelations

My heart matters most

Keep the money, I'll take freedom

You and I (You and I)

Really means whatever you want (What you want)

Turns out I

Like to do things that you don't

That's right (That's right)

I like the ocean, that's right (That's right)

I sink my toes in, that's right (That's right)

The water's comin' tonight

I'll let you go with the tide

That's right, that's right

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.