The Kelly Clarkson Show
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Can’t stay away from Kellyoke? Understandable, and luckily, you don’t have to. Kelly Clarkson dropped her newest Kelly Clarkson Show live cover on Monday (Feb. 27), this time, singing Muna‘s “Stayaway,” for you to come back and dance to as many times as you like — just don’t go texting your toxic ex.
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The three-time Grammy winner spent the performance under a wash of aptly melancholy blue lighting, passionately singing Muna’s straight-shooting lyrics about the struggles of keeping your distance from a past relationship when everything reminds you of your former partner. “If I see my old friends, we’ll go out dancing/ If we go out dancing, then we’ll go to the bar,” Clarkson sang. “If we go to the bar, then there’s gonna be drinking/ If I drink, I wanna see where you are.”
“No one ever told me leaving was the easy part/ I gotta stay away,” she continued, her voice growing more and more intense with each line. “Leaving you was easy, now I gotta do what’s hard/ I gotta stay away.”
“no way!!!!!” the band tweeted Monday after seeing Clarkson’s tribute. “so honored, wow.”
The electro-pop rock anthem was released in 2019 as a single off Muna’s sophomore album Saves The World, which has since been followed up by the Los Angeles trio’s self-titled third album. Comprised of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson, the band signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ label Saddest Factory Records in 2021 and will join their label-owner on the road this year, both serving as openers for dates on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform Muna’s “Stayaway” on The Kelly Clarkson Show in the video above.
Kelly Clarkson brought a special guest to help open the Thursday (Feb. 16) episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show: Corey Ward of The Voice.
To kick off the “Kellyoke” duet, the superstar and her former protégé harmonized on “Falling Slowly” from John Carney’s 2007 musical film Once. “I don’t know you but I want you all the more for that,” Ward crooned, strumming an acoustic guitar before Clarkson joined him in singing the chorus: “Take this sinking boat and point it home/ We’ve still got time/ Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice/ You’ve made it now/ Falling slowly, sing your melody/ I’ll sing along.”
Ward was part of Team Kelly back in 2021 during Season 20, where he was eliminated in the Live Semifinal round before Cam Anthony eventually took the trophy for Blake Shelton’s team. Some of his most memorable performances on The Voice include his audition with Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” as well as covers of Clarkson’s “Already Gone,” Lewis Capaldi’s “Bruises” and “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls.
Later in the show, Clarkson interviewed Ward about his time on the reality singing competition, his mom’s cancer diagnosis — which led him to initially audition for Season 19 — as well as his new single “Close to Love.”
In recent days, the original American Idol winner has also covered everything from Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again,” Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack,” Camille Yarbrough’s Fatboy Slim-sampling “Take Yo’ Praise” and more.
Watch Clarkson and Ward duet on “Falling Slowly” below.
All aboard the time machine. With her newest Kellyoke cover, Kelly Clarkson is taking us from 2023 back to 1982 with a song about 1999 — or should we say, the song about 1999, Prince‘s apocalyptic synth smash from his fifth studio album of the same name.
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With purple lights (because, of course) raining down on her and her two backup singers, Clarkson honored Prince’s original hit while still making it her own, effortlessly adding riffs and high notes to the track’s chugging melody. “The sky was all purple there were people running everywhere,” she belted Thursday (Feb. 9), warped synths filling in the gaps between lyrics. “Tryin’ to run from the destruction, you know I didn’t even care.”
“Say, say, 2000-00, party over, oops, out of time/ So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999/ War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight/ So if I gotta die/ I’m gonna listen to my body tonight.”
It’s not the first time the three-time Grammy winner has covered Prince on The Kelly Clarkson Show. In 2021, she and her band Y’all channeled the High Priest of Pop with a performance of his iconic 1986 hit “Kiss,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks the year it was released.
“1999” was released back when the year felt like centuries away, on the fifth of more than 40 studio albums released by Prince, 1982’s 1999. The track reached No. 12 on the Hot 100, meanwhile the album hit No. 7 on the Billboard 200.
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform Prince’s “1999” on The Kelly Clarkson Show in the above video.
P!nk is stopping by The Kelly Clarkson Show next Monday (Feb. 6) to chat about her upcoming album Trustfall and duet with Kelly Clarkson on “What About Us.”
In a preview clip, the host jokes that her long-awaited 10th studio album will be filled with songs about “sadness and depression and divorce,” P!nk counters, “Mine is more like the world is ending. … But those are the best songs! But it’s also like, I’m still a wife and a daughter and a mother, and I lost my dad, and it’s the pandemic. And then my almost dearest friend in the whole world died eight months later, and I’m still parenting and all of these things.
“So you write all those songs,” the singer continues. “And then you get to a point where you’re like, ‘Well if we are sliding sideways off the axis, let’s dance.’”
P!nk also opened up about the meaning behind the album’s newly released title track, saying, “I feel like life right now — getting out of bed in the morning, having a vagina, dropping your kids off at school, participating in elections — any of it requires so much trust right now. And I think life is a trust fall and those are the questions you have to ask: what do you fall for and what’s worth it?”
The conversation leads to Clarkson asking P!nk about her politically charged single “What About Us” and eventually the two pop stars decide to harmonize their way through the 2017 hit.
P!nk’s Trustfall is set to be released Feb. 17. Watch previews from her interview and duet with Clarkson below.
Kelly Clarkson‘s latest Kellyoke performance is sure to drive Fine Young Cannibals fans crazy. For the Tuesday (Jan. 24) episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the singer and her band Y’all took the stage to cover one of the British pop-rock band’s biggest hits — you guessed it — “She Drives Me Crazy.”
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The three-time Grammy winner and her in-house band of backup musicians did the late ’80s anthem justice with fluttering synth effects, straightforward electric guitar riffs and, as usual, Clarkson’s effortless vocals. “She drives me crazy like no one else,” she sang underneath neon green and purple lights. “She drives me crazy and I can’t help myself.”
Released in 1988, “She Drives Me Crazy” was Fine Young Cannibals’ first ever No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It served as the lead single for the group’s iconic second studio album The Raw & the Cooked (1989), which topped the Billboard 200 and spawned the band’s second of two No. 1 singles: “Good Thing.”
Though the three members of the Cannibals — David Steele, Andy Cox and Roland Gift — went their separate ways in 1992, their musical mark on the end of the 1980s remains influential in particular to modern artists. “I remember reading an article about Taylor Swift,” David Z, producer of The Raw & The Cooked, told Billboard in 2019. “She was working at the time with Jack Antonoff in New York on 1989.”
“And she said how she wanted to do a song like ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’ She said, ‘I really think ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ could be on the radio now. It’s that timeless,’” he continued. “I thought it was odd at first coming from Taylor Swift, but it was really cool. It seems like Fine Young Cannibals got underneath everybody and they’re still there.”
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals below:
It’s Kellyoke, Taylor’s Version. On the latest episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, Kelly Clarkson and her band Y’all performed “Better Man,” one of the most devastating ballads penned by Taylor Swift back in her country music days.
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“I know the bravest thing I ever did was run,” the three-time Grammy winner effortlessly belted, she and her entire band sporting football jerseys for the talk show’s special NFL-themed episode Monday (Jan. 23). “Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can feel you again/ But I just miss you, and I just wish you were a better man.”
Originally written by Swift leading up to her 2012 album Red, “Better Man” was scrapped from the track list and remained unheard by the public until the country-turned-pop star sent it to Little Big Town in 2016. The Alabama quartet released the track as the lead single off their 2017 album The Breaker.
Swift similarly lent an unreleased Red era song, “Babe,” to Sugarland, and appeared in the country duo’s music video for the track. Later, the “Anti-Hero” hitmaker would record both “Better Man” and “Babe” herself for her 2021 re-release, Red (Taylor’s Version), which was part of an ongoing project Swift’s taken on in order to reclaim ownership of her masters.
Funnily enough, it was Kelly Clarkson who was one of the first to publicly suggest that Swift rerecord her music at the height of Swift’s feud with former label owner Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. In 2019, she tweeted, “@taylorswift13 just a thought, U should go in & re-record all the songs that U don’t own the masters on exactly how U did them but put brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions. I’d buy all of the new versions just to prove a point.”
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform Taylor Swift’s “Better Man” below.
Kelly Clarkson started the Thursday (Jan. 19) episode of her talk show with a rendition of Chris de Burgh‘s “The Lady in Red.”
Backed by her house band Y’all, the singer belted the overly earnest love song, singing, “Never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight/ Never seen you shine so bright/ Never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance/ They’re looking for a little romance, given half a chance/ I have never seen that dress you’re wearing/ Or the highlights in your hair catch your eyes, I have been blind/ Lady in red/ Is dancing with me, cheek to cheek.”
Released as the second single from de Burgh’s 1986 album Into the Light, the ballad served as the British-Irish artist’s international breakthrough and hit No. 1 throughout the world, though it ultimately topped out at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of ’87.
After singing the track, Clarkson invited Bryan Cranston to the couch, where she promptly played a recently unearthed video dating service ad the Breaking Bad star filmed sometime in the 1980s. Then, Rita Wilson joined the pair to dish on the “sing for your supper” parties she throws with Tom Hanks for their celebrity pals.
Other Kellyoke numbers Clarkson has chosen to cover recently include Joji’s “Glimpse of Us” (with not one, but two pianos!), The Offspring’s “Come Out and Play (Keep ‘Em Separated),” Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” and Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World.”
Watch Clarkson power through “The Lady in Red” below.
Fans got a glimpse of Kelly Clarkson at her most soulful during the Wednesday (Jan. 18) Kellyoke. Singing Joji‘s 2022 breakthrough hit “Glimpse of Us” on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the three-time Grammy winner stayed true to the original by performing the track with just piano backing her up.
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There was, however, a small twist. Clarkson had not one, but two accompanists onstage with her, with musicians Jason Halbert and Kyle Whalum playing dual pianos, one on either side of the “Stronger” singer. Unlike Joji’s original recording, which features layers of gorgeous vocal harmonies, Clarkson’s voice stood on its own.
The bareness of the talk-show host’s tone gave it a particularly soulful edge, which Clarkson enhanced by bending certain notes and riffing through others. “Sometimes I look in his eyes, and that’s where I found a glimpse of us,” she sang, taking the final chorus up an octave and personalizing the pronouns by changing “her” to “his.”
Though Joji has been successful on the periphery of mainstream pop for years, “Glimpse of Us,” released in June, is undoubtedly the 30-year-old singer-songwriter’s biggest hit to date. The track peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking Joji’s top 10 debut and by far his highest charting song so far.
Just a couple months ago, Joji release his third studio album, Smithereens — off which “Glimpse of Us” was the lead single — in November. The set debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, and logged its 10th week on the chart this week.
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform Joji’s “Glimpse of Us” on The Kelly Clarkson Show above.
Kelly Clarkson opened the Friday (Jan. 6) episode of her talk show with a cover of Duran Duran‘s “Ordinary World.”
Wearing a simple black dress and matching tights, the host extraordinaire sang, “Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue/ Thought I heard you talking softly/ I turned on the lights, the TV, and the radio/ Still I can’t escape the ghost of you/ What has happened to it all?/ Crazy, some’d say/ Where is the life that I recognize?/ Gone away” before launching into the track’s high-flying chorus.
Originally released as the lead single from 1993’s Duran Duran (The Wedding Album), the soft rock ballad shot to No. 1 on the Pop Airplay chart and also landed at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band’s biggest hit since their 1985 James Bond theme “A View to a Kill.”
Coincidentally, fellow American Idol alum Adam Lambert also recently unveiled his rendition of “Ordinary World,” from his upcoming album of covers, High Drama, set for release this February.
During the show, Clarkson also welcomed Alison Williams to discuss her leading role in the new Blumhouse Productions horror flick M3GAN and introduced her audience to Bob Hearts Abishola star Folake Olowofoyeku’s very first music video for the song “Ehen Ehen Okay Okay.”
Other recent “Kellyoke” covers picked by Clarkson to kick off the new year include Ronnie Milsap’s “Lost in the Fifties Tonight,” Blake Shelton’s “Honey Bee” and Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away.”
Watch Clarkson power through Duran Duran’s ’90s-era soft rock hit below.
Mark your calendars, country fans! Dolly Parton‘s new song comes out in… 23 years. In a newly released clip from the country music icon’s appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show a couple weeks ago, Parton opened up about the top-secret song she wrote and buried in a time capsule seven years ago — and confessed that she really, really wants to go dig it up.
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Sitting down with Kelly Clarkson a few weeks ago, Parton talked about how the song, written and recorded for the 2015 opening of her Dollywood DreamMore resort, has driven her crazy for years. “You have no idea how that has bothered me,” the “Jolene” singer told Clarkson on Dec. 1. “I wanna go dig that up so bad. It’s a really good song!”
“I don’t know whose damn idea that was,” she joked. “They weren’t expecting me to be there at all, and I probably won’t be. I might be there, who knows. I figure it’ll probably disintegrate and nobody will ever hear it, that’s what bothers me. If it rots in there before they open it.”
Parton first announced the song’s existence in her 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, revealing that it will come to light when her theme park staff opens up the time capsule on the resort’s 30th anniversary in 2045 — meaning, she will be 99 years old when people finally hear it. The “Jolene” singer wrote that putting the mysterious track in the capsule felt “like burying one of my kids, putting it on ice or something, and I won’t be around to see it brought back to life.”
“It’s just burning me up inside that I have to leave it in there,” she added at the time.
The 10-time Grammy winner’s Kelly Clarkson Show appearance also featured a surprise live performance of “9 to 5,” sung as a duet with Clarkson after the two recorded a new version of the 1980 hit for the movie Still Working 9 to 5. During the show, Parton also opened up about the very first time she ever heard Whitney Houston’s iconic cover of her classic hit “I Will Always Love You.”
“I was just driving along, and I had the radio on,” Dolly recalled. “It’s one of those things, it was like a dog hearing a whistle. ‘What is that?’ That’s the first time — they hadn’t sent it to me or nothing. When it went into, ‘And I …,’ I just freaked out.”
“I had to pull over to the side, because I honestly thought I was going to wreck,” she added. “It was the most overwhelming feeling, and you know how great that was.”
Watch Parton chat with Clarkson about her secret track in the video above.