Kelly Clarkson is preparing not just for the premiere of the fourth season of her talk show, but also for the release of brand new songs.
Clarkson says she has a new album recorded and expects to release it in 2023 in an exclusive interview for the cover story of this week’s issue of Variety.
After 2017’s “Meaning of Life,” this will be Clarkson’s first big studio album in over five years. (In 2021, the singer put out a Christmas album titled “When Christmas Comes Around.)
Kelly Clarkson reveals that she will be releasing a divorce album in 2023.
The record will be her first major studio album in five years.
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The release date is set for next year. And this is a significant album, Clarkson tells Variety. “This is something I’m working on in therapy; I have trouble expressing myself verbally at times, so music is therapeutic for me. Simply said, it has been restorative. I made that album a long time ago.
Clarkson has released seasonal music and a “Kellyoke” album for the summer of 2022, both inspired by the signature opening portion of her talk show “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” And in just a few days, she and Dolly Parton will release a new cover of “9 to 5”
According to Clarkson’s interview with Variety, the recording of her new album took two years. The breakup with her ex-husband, music manager Brandon Blackstock, with whom she shares two young children, served as inspiration for her new work.
There were a lot of feelings at the beginning of the breakup between my ex and me. “It was challenging,” Clarkson admits. My producer and I were joking about how we once wrote 25 songs in a week, and it all came up in conversation the other day.
The album features many of these songs. Almost all of these were written almost two years ago. After that, I explained to my record label that I couldn’t discuss the experience until I’d fully processed it. Well, that’s happy! That’s why we’ve done so much Christmas stuff the previous two years.
“I hadn’t been working tough on an album until I needed to,” she continues. I just had a lot on my plate. There was a tonne of jobs, and I’m a single mother, and it’s hard enough as it is to juggle everyone’s schedules when you’re married. And then my divorce happened, and I felt compelled to write it. You may be quite angry in that state of mind, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to let it out.
So, it’s safe to say that the album’s songs encompass the full range of human experience. It’s almost like a romance arc, with a beautiful, sweet beginning followed by growth and change. And things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to.
Atlantic Records, Clarkson’s record company, will release the album. She hints that she’d like to make a return to the stage, however with her commitments to “The Kelly Clarkson Show” and “The Voice” as well as her role as a mother and wife, she’ll have to figure out a touring schedule. (And it’s not like she hasn’t been singing regularly; each episode of “Kellyoke” features her performing a different song.)
In no uncertain terms, I will be performing in public. Clarkson promises that they are working on it. But when you write an album as intimate as this one, it’s a relief to finally perform it live.
She claims that the summer is the only time she will have free to go on tour, as that is when her talk show is on break. She invites those who may relate to her situation to “come and join me” because “I know there are other boys and girls out there that have been through this kind of breakup who are going to need to scream at the top of their lungs.”
Clarkson credits her listeners as the driving force behind the creation of this album.
“The one reason that made me feel, ‘I should put this out is that most of the songs in my career that people will often come up to me [about] are the ones that are stories inspired by my life that maybe they’re going through as well,” Clarkson explains. “I’m over it now, but there is somebody else who is in it, and that’s a hard place to be, especially if you feel alone,” she says, referring to her divorce.
It’s hard to explain, it’s unpleasant to experience in public, and it’s especially difficult when dealing with children. For the record, I do believe I wrote this for a reason; it may help others as much as it has helped me.