American Songwriter July/August Cover Story: Kelly Clarkson—Pieced Together 

It’s Kelly Clarkson’s 41st birthday, and she’s performing to a sold-out crowd at The Belasco in Los Angeles. For one night only, April 24, Clarkson is sharing songs from her new album, chemistry, but she can’t get through the opening track. Attempting to sing the a cappella intro of “skip this part,” Clarkson stops and needs a moment to collect herself on stage.

“I got so choked up to where I couldn’t get sound out,” Clarkson says of that show, which was the first time she circled back to the songs documenting one of the most painful times of her life. “I was destroyed, just bawling. That’s kind of how it was in the studio with that song, too. It was really hard to record.”

Many of the songs on chemistry were also difficult for Clarkson to write but none more than its first. Can I skip this part / When I fall to pieces / Back here at start / Need a time machine / And if I could escape all this hurt and this pain, oh I would sings Clarkson on the tender ballad, a marker of the beginning and the end of her seven-year marriage to Brandon Blackstock, which was finalized in 2022. 

“Everybody keeps saying the end [of the pain] is going to happen, but I just really want to skip all of this,” says Clarkson of the weightier track. “It just hurts physically, emotionally, mentally—everything hurts—and I think, unfortunately, people can relate to that.”

Dubbed her “divorce” album, chemistry chronicles the ripples within her marriage and the different stages of emotions as it was falling apart. Throughout its 14 tracks, chemistry exposes the vulnerable spaces and aftermath of love and grief. Writing through it all ultimately helped Clarkson skip to the other side of this ending.

Produced by longtime collaborators Jason Halbert—who has worked with Clarkson since her third album, My December, and also co-wrote the chemistry tracks “skip this part” and “red flag collector”—and Jesse Shatkin, along with Erick Serna, the album follows Clarkson’s 2017 album, Meaning of Life, and 2021 holiday album, When Christmas Comes Around….

Straight from its title, Clarkson wanted to evoke the undeniable feeling, the chemistry and sparks of connecting with someone, whether good or bad. That feeling moves into the penetrating “mine,” and it’s avenging I hope one day someone will take your heart and hold it tight / Make you feel like you’re invincible deep inside / And right when you think that it’s perfect they cross a line / And steal your shine / Like you did mine.  

On “me,” co-written by “ABCDEFU” teen singer GAYLE, and released with “mine” as a lead single, Clarkson added her own inflections to the soulful track.

Sandwiched in between the two songs on the album is “high road,” which confronts feelings of brokenness and putting others’ needs before one’s own. Also the name of Clarkson’s ranch in Montana (High Road Ranch), the song is the only cover on the album, originally written by Rachel Orscher, associate music producer of The Kelly Clarkson Show, and one-half of the pop duo Jane Black.

“I know Rachel’s life, and I know where that song came from for her, and I related to it in a completely different way,” says Clarkson, who initially wanted to cover “high road” on the Kellyoke segment of The Kelly Clarkson Show. “That made me think, ‘There are so many people that can relate to this feeling and this message,’ and it fit in perfectly with the record, even though I didn’t write it.”

On “favorite kind of high,” Clarkson relives the elation at the start of a relationship. “It’s the beginning of something, that intoxicating, sexy thing—you feel it, like a fantasy,” says Clarkson. “Maybe that’s the sound that I’m feeling more right now because I’m at a different stage, not to where I want to be in a relationship, but I can see that happening in the future, so that’s the song I probably vibe with the most right now.”

Still revolving around her own relationship—Like a real life movie / Didn’t think it’d happen to me / Guess it didn’t / You just fooled me—Clarkson pays homage to the late screen legend on “rock hudson,” an early crush of hers from the moment she saw him in the 1959 romantic comedy Pillow Talk. 

“I was a kid, and I loved it,” shares Clarkson. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m in love with Rock Hudson.’ A lot of people pick Cary Grant or Brad Pitt, or whoever, but that was my guy.”

Waves—that’s how Clarkson describes the course of songs on chemistry. “That’s what I think a relationship is as a whole,” she says. “It comes in different waves, and then the different stages of grief, and the aftermath. It’s different waves, and you think you’ve overcome something, then a bigger one comes in.” 

 I heard you started running your mouth again / Bitin’ hands that feed ya / A little birdy told me you’re nobody’s friend / And the joke’s on me sings Clarkson on the mid-tempo “down to you,” co-written with Shatkin and Maureen “Mozella” McDonald.

“We were struggling, and there was a lot of that in there, and also other things in life, so I just kind of wrote that song,” shares Clarkson of “down to you,” which was an earlier track she wrote for the album. Likewise, “my mistake,” which was written by Shatkin, Alex Hope, and Sean Douglas, was also presented to her in the early stages of making the album. 

“I was really struggling, and I needed to get it out,” she says. “I was still married, so those two songs were the first ones, and I just really loved the message of [‘down to you’]. The production seemed just a bit more progressive and fresh than other stuff that I’ve been hearing.”

Living through the haze of her divorce while trying to keep her TV show running during the pandemic, Clarkson can’t pinpoint which songs came first in the stream of writing that emerged during this period. “When it comes to what was going on, I wrote so many songs that I honestly don’t know the very first one,” she admits. “I had no idea what kind of record this was going to be. I had no idea where it was gonna go. I just needed to write.”

At first, Clarkson guesses the first song she may have written was “mine,” since “it sounds like a stream of consciousness like a few of the songs do,” she says. Shortly after, Clarkson corrects herself: “No, it was ‘lighthouse.’”

The piano-led “lighthouse” showcases a revelatory tone that describes facing the end of a relationship: I see our true colors / Lately we’ve been lookin’ grey / I can’t turn back now / Cause you’d take me back down that road that always seems to come right back around. It is also the song that set the layered tones of the album. 

“[I was] calling my label going, ‘Hey, I don’t know what the overall sound will be because a lot of different sounds are coming out,’” says Clarkson. “It was almost like each emotion was coming out differently—‘me’ is soulful and ‘high road’ is a different song, which had a completely different vibe. Anything I attached to was just where I was emotionally at that place and that time.”

There was never any directional intention from the inception of chemistry through its end. “I just really needed to write it and get it out, and it was almost me figuring out what I was feeling and seeing,” Clarkson shares. “Sometimes you look up, and you don’t recognize yourself anymore. You’ve lost yourself in a way. You don’t know how you got to this place.”

Referring back to “lighthouse,” she adds, “You’re trying to figure it out, but then you love someone so deeply that you’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do, but I know, right now, I am drowning, and there is no light telling me where the land is.’”

In hindsight, Clarkson is thankful for the songs she wrote for chemistry. “Whether it’s a therapist, friends, family, sometimes you need to talk it out with people in order to hear yourself say things because you don’t even know what you’re thinking or feeling inside when you’re so lost,” says Clarkson. “It’s the same thing with writing for me. For me, talking with people is the same thing as me writing.”

Writing is how Clarkson says she processes things. After all, some of the best albums come out of artists when they’re struggling. “Sometimes I’m too empathetic, or I put myself in somebody’s shoes, or I look at every side of the situation,” she says. “That can be a curse because you remove yourself and you’re not thinking about what you’re going through. You’re not thinking about you. You forget to take care of yourself as well, so my process is writing it out.”

Toward the end of chemistry, Steve Martin adds some levity, playing banjo on the penultimate “i hate love.” Referencing romantic comedies and dramas that may have led her astray, Clarkson gives a loving nod to the actor and comedian: And ‘The Notebook’ lied / ‘It’s Complicated’ is more like what happens so you can keep Gosling and I’ll take Steve Martin. The lighter pop track is a juxtaposition between what Clarkson felt she was portraying while her life was shattering and what was really happening behind the scenes.

“I wrote it like a stream of consciousness, like most of this album,” says Clarkson of Martin’s featured track. “When I wrote [‘i hate love’], it was more cutesy. I just pictured myself smiling for the camera, because while the global pandemic was happening, my whole life was also erupting. We were stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no plumbing, and everything kept going wrong. I was traipsing through snow trying to make my TV show happen. There were a lot of things happening in my world at once, and I was really struggling, which no one knows.”

She adds, “I had to keep smiling, and everybody’s like, ‘We need the entertainment. We need to keep the show going.’ And once again, you just don’t think about yourself, and you put yourself on the back burner. You always have to smile, and you have to do your job, and sometimes you’re not doing great inside, and that’s no one’s fault that’s watching my TV show, or a fan who sees me at the grocery store. So you have to pull yourself together, but it’s really hard to do when everything is crumbling.”

The album became so personal that Clarkson wasn’t even sure when she would be ready to release it. All the tracks were written two and a half to three years ago, according to Clarkson, and once the album was wrapped up, she asked for it to be placed on hold so she could process what was happening in her life. 

“I told my label, ‘I cannot sit in an interview right now, I will break. I will not be able to get words out. It’s still too fresh for me. I know it’s been a couple of years, but I just can’t do it yet,’” she says. “So they waited until I felt like I could sit here and have this conversation. I needed to be removed from it. I needed to be through it and on the other side of it.”

Though some time has passed since she completed chemistry, she still felt the enormity of its songs during her recent Belasco show. “They’re still hitting in the same place for me, only because I know this person that wrote this, and I obviously am her—she’s a part of me,” shares Clarkson. “It’s very awesome to sing a song and know that you’re through something, but I think I’m still there. I don’t think they’re hitting me in a different way.”

Closing chemistry is the liberating “that’s right.” Featuring percussion by Sheila E, chemistry leaves on a more empowered note, capturing the space Clarkson says she’s living within now—The water’s comin’ tonight / I let you go with the tide. 

“That was the point of leaving that song for last, because of that message,” says Clarkson. “I think that was one of the last ones written, and it just felt right to leave with that kind of How Stella Got Her Groove Back. I do feel like I’m back.”

Now that some time has passed since one of the most heartbreaking times of her life, Clarkson says she found closure with chemistry. “My life now looks much different than it did then,” shares Clarkson. “And it’s not to say that there aren’t still struggles or hard things, but I was looking forward to getting to this point. That’s what ‘skip this part’ was about. I wanted to get to where I am now. Unfortunately, you can’t skip anything, and you just have to take that awful ride.”

There’s another reason why Clarkson made chemistry at this particular time: The songs are ones she hopes will resonate with people experiencing their own difficulties. 

“The worst part is when you’re going through something and no one around you is going through that thing,” she says. “The worst thing is feeling alone. I don’t want people to feel that, so if there’s a song on here or the album as a whole, that helps … that’s the reason for doing it.”

Clarkson adds, “If someone is going through the worst divorce, breakup, or whatever situation in life, if they can turn this record on and feel like they’re not alone, I’ve won.”

Photos by Brian Bowen Smith