Friday March 13, 2009
All that she wants
Kelly Clarkson broadens her musical horizons on All I Ever Wanted.
AMERICAN IDOL’s first lady, Kelly Clarkson is back with a fourth album, and is elated with her latest achievement.
“I just want to be able to look back at this album and be proud, and to think, ‘Man, that was awesome!’ ” says Clarkson, 26, in a press statement released by her local music distributor Sony BMG.
With this album All I Ever Wanted, Clarkson demonstrates her eagerness to continue branching out. She has sold over 20 million records around the world, landed eight singles in the Billboard Top 10, and won Grammys, MTV Video Music Awards, American Music Awards, and even been nominated for a CMA Award.
Clarkson co-wrote six tracks on the record and collaborated with a wide array of all-star producers and songwriters on this project including pop wizards Dr Luke and Max Martin, Idol judge Kara DioGuardi, Howard Benson, Ryan Tedder and Sam Watters.
The multi-platinum selling artiste says a lot of the new album has a soulful, 1970s rock vibe to it although there’s also a bit of club/dance music and some country pop, too.
While she was originally marketed as a pop musician with her debut album Thankful (2003), her sophomore effort, Breakaway (2004), pushed Clarkson to a more pop rock-oriented style of music.
The platinum-selling follow-up, 2007’s My December, arrived surrounded by widespread rumour and speculation about Clarkson having to wage an undignified war with her record label over creative control.
Clarkson, for one, still doesn’t know what the fuss was all about. “Really, it was a very positive experience,” says the daughter of a first-grade teacher and former engineer.
With her latest venture, Clarkson reveals that the album’s first single, My Life Would Suck Without You is an example of her need to personalise and connect with all of her material. “They write great catchy, sassy songs,” she says of Dr Luke and Max Martin. “But it became a very different song from how it started. We changed the point of view, and other things throughout, because we had to make it more Kelly Clarkson. And Luke and Max love that, because it’s a challenge for them to make a song really work for me.”
Katy Perry’s got a tune on the album too! I Do Not Hook Up comes courtesy of that defiant daughter of pastors. “I’ve been a fan of Katy’s since before I Kissed a Girl,” says Clarkson. “And when I heard that song, it really felt like something I could have written myself.”
The range Clarkson attempts on All I Ever Wanted shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to her fans. She was famously catapulted into the spotlight in 2002 as the very first American Idol winner.
Clarkson penned about half of the album, but it’s hard to pin down her work as representing any single style. “I’m very much a writer of whatever I’m going through, what I see in my life. And I’m 26, so I change every day!” she says.
“If you have that choice, why wouldn’t you want to bring out all the different sides and colours of your personality?”
Get a taste of Kelly Clarkson on All I Ever Wanted, now available at record stores nationwide.
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