Kelly Clarkson: 'I knew I wanted to do pop from the start.' Photograph: Cindy Ord/Getty Images North America
Hi, Kelly! The last time I interviewed you was in 2003, a year after you won the first series of American Idol. I was expecting a media-trained Idolbot, but you were really opinionated. (1)
They tried to get me to do a media-training class after Idol, but I didn’t want to, and they looked at my manager and said: “Good luck.” I like talking so I’m usually fine with doing interviews, but the part of my job I abhor is photo shoots. You spend all day setting up and waiting to take the picture, and it’s so boring.
Did you think you’d still be here now, 25 million albums and three Grammyslater?
I don’t know why I’ve lasted – you focus on the music, and sometimes the stars align and sometimes they don’t. I think it helped that I knew what I wanted to do from the start.
Which was…?
I wanted to do pop, because that means “popular”, and anything that was soulful. But it was hard to get that across at first. With Miss Independent (2), I had to cry in my label’s office to get it out [as a single]. They wanted me to sing like the Aretha songs I’d done on the show, and I was, like: “I’m 20 years old, I can do big ballads, but I also love guitars.” They didn’t want to do a lot of production with me. It was the same thing that would happen with Adele – she does ballads with a piano. I said: “That’s beautiful, but can I do other stuff?”
How do you deal with the nastiness of a lot of celebrity coverage, like the Daily Mail’s recent story about your “bizarre” dress sense?
I have journalist friends, and it’s sad to see people who have the talent to do more writing those kinds of stories. But it’s supply and demand, I guess – those websites wouldn’t exist if people weren’t reading them. I have a very thick skin, and I don’t usually let things like that get to me, but I’m human, and if people are mean on Twitter it hurts. But if [a journalist] is sitting behind a computer somewhere, writing nasty things, that doesn’t bother me. People always get mad at the paparazzi, but you have to get mad at the people funding it.
You did some witty tweets on Grammy night, like “I love this @edsheeran song! It’s weird he wrote it about me but hey I get it. #mygravitationalpull” So which song was that?
Oh. Uh … something like “Take me into your arms…”
Thinking Out Loud?
I think so. He’s amazing. So talented - and he’s young! Usually I’m there, but I wasn’t eligible this year, so I was watching it on TV and it was a different perspective. I thought it was really tasteful. When you’re at the Grammys, you don’t really experience it, and you definitely can’t tweet from your seat.
There was a slightly surreal story a couple of years ago about you buying Jane Austen’s ring at auction, then being refused permission to take it out of the country.
Her ring came up for sale at a Sotheby’s auction, and I thought: “I’ll probably spend too much money” [she paid £152,450], but my family doesn’t have any heirlooms to pass on, so I thought it would be lovely to have it. So I won it, and we got the export licence – and then [culture minister Ed Vaizey] suddenlyclaimed it as a national treasure.
You never got to wear it?
I kept it in a safety deposit box at Christie’s and wore it while I was in London. It was turquoise, but it was fragile – the band on it was weakening. My boyfriend was trying with my lawyer in parliament to let us keep it, because he was going to propose to me with it. In the end, we couldn’t, so instead, he made a replica for me at Christmas. (3)
So how did a Texas girl become such a big Austen fan? Is she taught in American schools?
We didn’t learn her at school, but one of my teachers was reading Jane Eyre, and I got interested [in British female authors of the period]. I read Persuasion and it painted a very realistic picture of life – I love how she wrote her female characters, because they were so independent.
Heartbeat Song from Kelly Clarkson’s new album Piece by Piece.
What do you think of the trend for big singers collaborating with other big singers? John Legend is on your new album, Piece By Piece, and you’ve done other collaborations.
I haven’t done that many … I did one with [US country star] Jason Aldean, but that was for his album, and I did a single with Vince Gill, but he’s country, too. (4) I hadn’t done a pop one till John Legend. I don’t want it to be forced: I don’t like it when they bring together a celebrity and a celebrity, regardless of how they sound. Just because people are lead singers doesn’t mean they can harmonise. Harmony is my favourite thing – I’m jealous of my backing singers, because they have more fun.
You’ve said it was hard to get a break when you started because your voice made record labels assume you were black, and they were disappointed when you turned out not to be.
I didn’t have money for a photo shoot, so I sent my demo out – a soulful demo - without a picture. And a couple of times, [label staff] said to me, “Oh, you’re not black” – they wanted a black-backing-singer look. I did get some calls returned:Gerry Goffin (5) was the first person to be excited by me. They invited me to his home and I saw his gold records and thought, “this is amazing”. So I had some interest from people who’d worked with major artists, but I still wasn’t really getting anywhere. I was living with a girl I barely knew on Croft Avenue [in Los Angeles], and the day we moved in we went out to dinner. We came back from dinner and the place was on fire.
Actually on fire?
Actually on fire. I lost everything except one box. I had to sleep in my car. And then I heard about a random audition for a talent show…
And here you are, 13 years later. The Sunday Mirror once interviewed you and claimed you said “No one on the planet should be as famous as me”, but you’vesaid that was a misquote.
That was a good one! They took what I said out of context – I said I don’t think people should be so famous that they can’t have a normal life. The girl asked if I thought I was too famous, so I said being famous is like a big piece of dynamite. And it was misquoted, and I sounded like such a tool.
“Tool” is very British. Do they say that in Texas?
Tool? Sure we do.
Footnotes
1) Among other things, she said she disliked people with nothing to say for themselves.
2) Her second single, a snappy R&B tune that contrasted sharply with the sappy balladry of her debut.
3) She was wearing it during this interview, but it paled next to her multi-carat wedding and engagement rings.
4) She also did a countrified duet with Robbie Williams for his Swings Both Waysalbum.
5) Lyricist on some of the greatest pop songs of the 1960s.
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