Kelly Brianne Clarkson brokeaway as the winner of the inaugural American Idols season on the 4th September 2002 and is, according to Gabbi Shaw of Insider.com. one of the show’s most successful American Idol to date. She has had three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 with eleven top 10 singles on the Hot 100. Clarkson has a record of 15 Grammy nominations, winning on three categories i.e. Best Pop Vocal Albums for the albums Breakaway (2006) and Stronger (2013), becoming the first artist to win on this category twice. She also won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2006 for ‘Since U been gone’.

She’s had a good transition from hardcore rock to Pop Rock amalgamated with light to soft Pop as can be heard from her second, third and fourth studio albums namely ‘Breakaway’ released in 2004, ‘My December’ released in 2007 and ‘All I Ever Wanted’ released in 2009. To say I enjoy following her music is an understatement as my adoration for her unique talent began as soon as I bought her ‘Breakaway’ album. That was back in the days and I remember that like ‘A moment like this’.

This piece seeks to explore her journey through an eleven year recollection from a selection of four albums beginning 2004 – 2015. Each album represented a significant and unique period in my life as personified by the songs that made up the albums.

Breakaway (2004)

This was her second studio album, following her debut ‘Thankful’ which was released in 2000. The album consists of twelve tracks with my favorite, ‘Breakaway’ as the opening track, which was co-written by Avril Lavigne. More on why this song is my favourite later on. Other popular songs in the album include ‘Since U been Gone’, ‘Behind these hazel eyes’, the up-beat ‘Walk away’ and the ballad ‘Because of you’. The album beautifully concludes with a live rendition of ‘Beautiful disaster’ produced and written by Matthew Wilder with Rebeccah Jordan and initially released on her debut studio album. Breakaway as a song, talks about a young girl, who grew up in a small town with big dreams, longing for them to be achieved. This young girl worked and prayed hard to get out of the darkness and into the sun, make a success of her life. It talks about taking a risk, taking a chance and making a change to breakaway. A story that Kelly’s life resonates with how she managed to get into the business after winning a reality TV show that launched her into instant stardom. The song also speaks of the importance of home and paying homage to where one comes from by not looking away nor downplaying its significance with the loved ones back at home that it symbolizes. This is the album for me, that started it all. Bought it while I was in Grade 10 and it instantly because one of my most prized possessions. I would listen to it every morning before I walked to school and as soon as I returned home afterwards. It merged with the phase in my life when I started mapping out my future plans, dreaming and longing for a better tomorrow for me and my loved ones, working hard to achieve good grades that will set me up for success was part of the mission. It did help me breakaway in my own right.

All I ever wanted (2009)

‘All I Ever Wanted’ is Kelly Clarkson’s fourth studio album which was released on March 6th, 2009. This was exactly a year after I had matriculated and as a so-called ‘late bloomer’ when it came to matters of the heart and relationships, coincided with a time when I ventured into this new adventure that I had not tapped into in the past. This album was released at a time when all emotions and pressure for me were at their peak. The album has a total fourteen songs on the normal full length album and sixteen tracks on the deluxe version with hits such as ‘My life would suck without you’, ‘I do not hook up’, ‘Impossible’ and the break-up pop rock ballad ‘Cry’. The album also had the controversial ‘Already gone’ song as a pop ballad which at first glance appears to share similarity in terms of bands to the song ‘Halo’ by Beyoncé. As I mentioned earlier, this album was released at a time when I was just exploring the dating game, of which I must add as a disclaimer – that I am no master or expert in. Songs like ‘Don’t let me stop you’, ‘Ready’ and ‘Long shot’, ‘Tip of my tongue’ were fundamental towards setting up the foundation for any relationship I had aimed to initiate in my life. Songs from the album also helped me work on my courage ‘to shoot my shot‘ as the current social media generation would describe it – some shots succeeded, while others fell flat. The album talked about unpredictability, probability, patience, and not having any regrets, taking chances and not willing to compromise on love to beat the odds.

Stronger (2011)

Now ‘Stronger’ for me, represented a tipping point – a point in life where someone gets to learn and understand their purpose and value in this world and also getting to a point where whatever it is that’s not beneficial is discarded. It’s important in life to make a boundary exist between what you want and what you don’t want, what matters most, versus what defeats the purpose. Stronger is Kelly Clarkson’s fifth studio album released in 2011 and has the song ‘Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)’ as its cover song. The album has thirteen tracks on its original release and then a total of seventeen songs for the deluxe version of the album which include ‘Mr Know It All’, ‘Darkside’, ‘Einstein’, ‘You Love Me’ and ‘Hello’. Still keeping true to her pop rock element, the album came with an interesting but beautiful country song duet which she did with Jason Aldean, titled ‘Don’t You Wanna Stay’. I must say, I enjoyed her and her team’s clever writing skills and how they used mathematical principles such as for example ‘a love divided by the square root of…’ and ‘multiply’ on the song ‘Einstein’, a song about someone who has been blindsided by love and has realized that it is better to call it quits. Two songs speak to me the most in this album and they serve as significant highlights to where I was in my life at the time of its release – ‘I forgive you’ and ‘You can’t win’. Both songs speak a level of wisdom and understanding that I grew to find myself in with learning the importance of forgiveness and moving on peacefully so from all the past wrongs that were done to someone and to learn how to breathe again from that great hold the hurt has caused. You can’t win signified an epiphany moment where I leant to make peace with the fact that it’s impossible to please everyone and that every person has an opinion and yours is to not live your life based on theirs. It speaks to those that feel like they do not fit into a particular circle, the misfits, often under dressed. I have found myself in countless of those moments at that point and the song helped me realize that those who don’t quite fit in, don’t need to try hard and that it’s fine and you can’t always win with people. What’s an incredible album this is. The album received four nominations at the 55th Grammy Awards, winning the Best Pop Vocal album for it. What doesn’t kill you, does indeed make you stronger.

Piece by Piece (2015)

Now here is what it means to come full circle, putting all the puzzle pieces together after such a successful run. ‘Piece by Piece’ is Clarkson’s seventh and final studio album released under RCA – the recording label deal she won after winning American Idols back in 2002. She culminated her journey with RCA beautifully through this project that displays her growth both as a composer and well-rounded artist. The album consists of thirteen songs on its original release and sixteen on its deluxe version. The album artwork according to Wikipedia.org is almost similar for both album types but differs slightly on the deluxe version where Clarkson is captured looking towards the left (as seen on the image above). The album earned her three Grammy award nominations including for Best Pop Vocal album, her fourth project to be nominated in the same category. Other songs in the album include the opening ‘Heartbeat Song’, ‘Invisible’, ‘I had a dream’, ‘Tightrope’ and ‘Someone’ to mention only a few. She also had a duet with RnB artist John Legend on the single ‘Run, Run, Run’. What this album means to me, is evolution and coming full circle. You can clearly tell her maturity in terms of sound, lyric content and versatility as explored in the project. She’s grown to cement her worth and authority in the industry as a respected and professional artist in her own right. The song ‘Piece by Piece’ juxtaposes a girl’s plea for her stray father, who has now grown up to be a mother to a little daughter. She speaks of the profound role that her daughter’s father is now playing in their lives to piece all the broken parts from the mom’s past while growing up without her father’s presence. She values the impact of a father’s role in staying and being present in their life, which adds to the piecing together of everything that was once shattered and broken apart. Kelly Clarkson has shown great maturity, growth and development throughout the years. She had become a mother, at the time of this release, to a beautiful baby girl named River Rose Blackstock who was born in 2014. Kelly is quoted crediting the birth of her daughter for the inspiration behind the lyrics of ‘Piece by Piece’.

In an iconic performance during the final season of American Idols, Kelly chose to perform an acoustic version of ‘Piece by Piece’ to close off an episode. The scene, which is available on YouTube as posted by Sebas Monslave in 2016 (link to video is attached https://youtu.be/tuunqfdz388) shows an emotional Clarkson doing her utmost to keep it together until the end of the performance, leaving many of the people in the audience captivated and moved. The performance was iconic in that Clarkson was the first American idol who has since grown to be one of the contestants who’s earned significant success from the show.

Personally, Piece by Piece was a point of personal growth and reflection -finding myself at a point where I could separate what was wrong from what was not. Learning to get to a point where I needed to carve a way forward for myself and future, setting all those plans in motion. Realizing the importance of the footprints I aim to leave in this world, leaving a legacy and searching for more to achieve out of life as can be reflected upon in the song ‘I had a dream’. I realized the beauty in being human, letting things and emotions come out, and not making it a crime to fall apart in life at times as can be reflected in the song ‘Let your tears fall’. I also learnt the importance of reflecting back in time and learning from the mistakes of the past through the song ‘Nostalgic’. I also love one song in particular, the up-tempo ‘War Paint’ which speaks of the beauty existing in removing ‘war paint’, breaking down the walls of hate, anger and conflict, and avoiding war at each point in our relations.

The Kelly Clarkson Show

Fast-forward to 2021, over eight albums combined later – Kelly Clarkson is now a three time Daytime Emmy award nominated TV talk show host. Her talk show, The Kelly Clarkson Show, currently on its third season is her latest successful venture. Her talk show premiered on the 9th September 2019 and is produced and distributed by NBC Universal. The talk show is based on hearty conversations and of course good music. Talk about a complete 360 degree evolution for an artist who shot to fame from entering a reality music competition and has risen above the odds to sustain her brand, music and relevance in the industry over the years. I eagerly await any of her latest releases as I know will further cement her evolution and growth.

Article references

https://www.insider.com/american-idol-winners-ranked-by-success-2021-3

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Clarkson_discography

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kelly_Clarkson_Show

Youtube video link – https://youtu.be/tuunqfdz388