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Frankly Speaking With Kelly Clarkson

JACKIE FRANK: Let’s look at where it all began, way back with American Idol in 2002. What drove you to enter in the first place?

KELLY CLARKSON: I was living in LA and struggling. My apartment had burnt down and I had to live in my car for a few days. I didn’t even know it was a TV show until the third audition. I just needed to pay my bills.

JF: Describe yourself back then. Who was that young girl who turned up and went “I can sing”?

KC: I’ve always been very bold and unashamed and not embarrassed, and I have to thank my mother for that. My mum had to be that woman; she worked really hard and put herself through school while raising kids alone.

JF: Tell me a bit about some of the chaos of Idol back then.

KC: Chaos is the best word for it because it blew up halfway through the show. No-one watched it and then everyone watched it, and the producers didn’t know how to handle that. They had us working so hard, like from 7am to 10 at night. We were kids. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing.

JF: How do you feel about that time now?

KC: People always think I might be ashamed of coming from it, but I love how I got in the business. I’ve lived in LA before and I had deals offered to me and they were horrible. Being no-one and having no leverage gets you nowhere creatively. So it was nice to be able to say, well, these millions of people liked what I was doing.

Kelly Clarkson and marie claire's publisher, Jackie Frank. Photo: marie claire

JF: If you could, is there anything you’d go back and change about the course of your career?

KC: I always tell young artists, be careful of who you surround yourself with. I’ve worked with a lot of people that love me and love what I do, but they had different goals. One manager just wanted to manage the most amazing person in the world, and I don’t want to be that girl. I don’t want my whole identity to be music. I love music, but my biggest dream was to have a successful marriage and successful family, probably because of how I grew up.

JF: Your parents divorced quite early?

KC: I was six years old.

JF: You’ve managed to achieve your dream. You’re married, with two step-children and you had your first baby [Clarkson is pregnant with her second]. But we need to talk about those horrific post-baby comments that were directed at you earlier this year.

KC: I don’t think it’s different from any other time in my life in this industry. It’s always that way. Never any harder, never any easier.

JF: So you’re saying that you are resilient?

KC: I grew up in a small town and everybody always had something to say about your weight, your hair colour, your religion ... Now it’s just on a bigger scale.

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JF: Have you always been at peace with your body?

KC: Well, I’ve just always been like, screw everyone. This is who I am. We are all on a different path, learning stuff about ourselves. I feel that as a society we invest far too much in [what] other people [think]. I don’t give a shit about that. I have enough going on in my life.

JF: Going back a bit, when you finished school, you turned down a scholarship to study music at college. Why?

KC: I knew what I really wanted to do: sing and be a back-up singer. I knew that couldn’t really be taught, so I moved to LA randomly with this girl I didn’t know and her roommate. So I didn’t go to college, but I have actually [studied] some stuff online. Psychology interests me, just because of my background.

JF: How do you mean?

KC: It’s interesting how many girls I know who have the same background as I do – like abandonment issues or daddy issues or whatever – and go a certain way. I am intrigued why some end up marrying that same guy or have abusive relationships, emotionally or physically, while some go the opposite way and are major feminists and confident.

JF: Is it only a few who actually go the other way and come out stronger?

KC: Statistically I don’t know, but for some reason I did. I think a lot of that has to do with my talent; it gave me confidence. When you find something that’s positive, it gives you that reason to be like, “No, I’m deserving of something better than what you’re offering” in this relationship, or in life or a job.

JF: What does your latest album, Piece By Piece, signify personally for you? KC: One single sums it up: “Invincible”. The music is so all consuming and almost makes you feel like you can fly and can survive anything. It’s like … one mighty warrior and I love that. I grew up listening to women like that.

JF: Your song “I Had A Dream” stands up for women’s rights. What was the motivation there?

KC: I get bummed sometimes because I’m all about freedom of expression. I would never want someone to tell me what I can and can’t do with my body, but I also wish people were taught what to value, and to think about what they want to be known for. If you start valuing something that is so irrelevant and totally takes away from your actual talent, that’s what people are going to want from you.

JF: You married your husband, Brandon Blackstock, in 2013. He is the son of your manager. How did people react when you started dating?

KC: They were all like, “We were wondering when it was going to happen!” I had a thing for him. He was a successful guy and it’s hard for women in this industry to date and meet a guy [without] some kind of inferiority complex, you know, with your spotlight situation. But Brandon grew up with it. At six years old he was backstage with huge stars because of his step-mum [country singer Reba McEntire] and what his father did for a living. So it was attractive to find someone so breezy. He’s a straight-up cowboy.

JF: (Laughs)

KC: He is! He was a champion bull rider.

JF: He is a man!

KC: He is a Southern man. Like he opens doors and pulls chairs out and gets upset if like, I try and he is like, “No, no, no, that’s a man’s [job]. I want to do that for you.”

JF: Where is the song about this?

KC: Well, I wrote “Piece By Piece” about the happy ending of that. Finding a man who allows me to be strong and independent, but also to be taken care of.

JF: And when you became a wife, you became a step-mum as well.

KC: When we were dating, he was like, “Well, I obviously have a six-year-old and an 11-year-old.” I was, like, “That’s awesome!” I love kids and I never thought I would be a mum.

JF: Really? Why?

KC: I’ve always had a very gypsy mentality and when you’re a mother you can’t be like that. I had had 13 years of selfishness in the industry of “everything is about me”. It all revolves around what my schedule is, around “Kelly Clarkson”. It was refreshing to go to be a part of stuff that wasn’t about me.

JF: Do you still see yourself as “Miss Independent”?

KC: Definitely. I love that about my husband too. Our big thing is we are not two halves that are a whole. He’s a whole and I’m a whole and we are a great team. We have our own lives and they obviously intertwine, but we have our own identities.