Seattlest Pix 09Nov24
Seattlest Pix 09Nov23
Can't Miss It: Monday
Thanksgiving Pairing Suggestion: Sides with a Pint
Dance Dance Party Party Back in Session
There's been a lot of hype about this disc--Clarkson fired her management and pissed off Clive Davis in the process of making it--and you can bet pretty much every reviewer will mention that somewhere in their assessment. We're sheep, so we thought we'd open with that and get it out of the way.
We'll be honest. Nobody's going to be giving Kelly Clarkson an award for being a great lyricist, so just get it out of your head before you enter this disc. She may love her some Patty Griffin, but she's got a long way to go before she can write like her hero. With that said, there is absolutely no reason everyone on the planet with an iPod or other MP3 device shouldn't have at least some of these songs blasting through their tiny little earphones. When we say "blasting," we mean it. This is a CD that requires cranking the shit out of your listening device and dancing vengefully around your living room after running that asshole out of your life.
Clarkson has gotten quite a bit of flak from "fans" (meaning the media), claiming that she screams on the album's first single, "Never Again." Hell yes, she screams, as she should. Have you heard what she's singing about? But here's the thing, a great singer should be able to scream. They should also be able to growl and whisper, moan, belt it, and then pull back and sing in a voice so sweet the little hairs stand up on our arms. As Janet Jackson informed us, "It's all about control," and Kelly Clarkson has got lots of it. The girl isn't your cookie cutter pop singer with a nice, pretty voice. She's got pipes, and we, for one, are really happy she's finally showing us the full range of them. Because we can scream, oh yes, but not like that.
Seattlest, as you may know, is a fan of independent music, and not so much of this "industry" thing that so many people use to get popular. But we've been doing the music thing long enough to respect that different people have different ways of getting heard. Clarkson decided to give some fledgling seemingly flash-in-the-pan TV talent show a whirl and--holy crap--she won. Had she been better advised at such a young age, maybe she would've gone the indie route, but we doubt it. Say what you will about awful AI-winner debut songs, Clarkson killed with "A Moment Like This," and she killed with its followup, the Aguilera-penned "Miss Independent." We kind of don't care that she's not indie. Someone has to be on the inside, and seeing the Pinks, Dixie Chicks and Kelly Clarksons of the world just makes us coo a little bit from time to time.
As for Davis' assertion that there are no hit singles on the album, we couldn't disagree more. "Never Again" is solid, so that's one. "Judas" is another rocking tune about betrayal with a chorus we're just waiting to blast on our road trip to Arizona next week, just so we can sing at the top of our lungs with her, which we're pretty sure is a good qualifier for a radio hit. "Sober" comes across pretty much like Clarkson's "Not Ready to Make Nice," and we love it.
At the same time, we really don't care if Clarkson has a radio hit. In our experience, some of the best records we've ever heard would not do very well on modern radio (Patty Smith's Horses comes to mind, as does Joni Mitchell's Blue). Of course trying to draw a line from Kelly Clarkson to Patty Smith and Joni Mitchell is a bit of a stretch, but hopefully it doesn't negate our point. She's just getting started. She's got that whole way-American-Idol-has-turned-out thing to overcome. But she also has her own artistic integrity to look out for, and if she had to piss off Clive Davis to make this record, then more power to her.
Seattlest, for one, will be happy to spend our summer listening to this radio-unfriendly screamer of a disc right next to all the other outstanding radio-unfriendly discs we've come to love.
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And now back to our regularly scheduled Seattle-related blog.
Hey... Seattleites care about Kelly Clarkson. Or rather, they care about Blake Lewis, who was on American Idol, which was responsible for Kelly Clarkson (who we're sure has met Kevin Bacon). So it works, sort of.