Kelly Clarkson says “no beef” with Carrie Underwood. “We don’t know each other!
Kelly Clarkson is often asked the question if she and season 4 American Idol winner Carrie Underwood are rivals. Although the OG American Idol and country star posed together on the red carpet at a Disney Channel event in 2018, the question still comes up.
“People always pit us together,” Kelly said while a guest on Watch What Happens Live on June 27, promoting her new album chemistry, “and we don’t even know each other well enough to be pitted together.”
“Like literally, we’ve run into each other a handful of times,” Kelly continued. “There’s no beef between us. There’s nothing between us, like, we don’t know each other!”
However, the fan calling in with a question was only asking what it was like to have Carrie as a guest on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Whoopsie! “Look everybody always asks me the pitted against each other question,” Kelly explained, a little embarrassed. “But it was awesome! It was great to have her on the show.” While Carrie appeared on the daytime talker as a virtual guest during the pandemic, Kelly looks forward to an in-person appearance
“I don’t know why they do that,” she said about some folks insistence on pitting the two stars against each other. “They don’t do it with dudes! They only do it with females.”
RCA and Clive Davis LIED to her about ‘Since U Been Gone’
Also on WWHL, host Andy Cohen asked about Clive Davis writing in his memoir that he had to force her to record “Since U Been Gone,” the mega hit song from her sophomore album Breakaway. The singer clarified the issue.
“Let’s give some backstory,” Kelly explained. “I was lied to, and they told me there are these producers who want to work with you and there’s this song. It had dummy lyrics. They didn’t have lyrics in. They said they wanted me to work with it. I was told to write to the song.”
“They flew me to Sweden,” she continued. “I get there and these two people (producers Max Martin and Dr. Luke) were not told I was writing to it and already had it written. I looked like a fool. The label had told me something completely different. That’s a red flag. Why lie to me like that? I don’t like the lying. That’s why I have a bad vibe with that song. It’s interesting facts that people like to leave out.”
Nevertheless, Kelly sings the hit with gusto while performing live. “It’s fine as hell to sing,” Kelly said. “I am such a great compartmentalizer and can put that aside and sing the hell out of it on tour. I would never not do that.”
Kelly would NOT name celebrities who were rude to her after she won Idol. However, some have gone on to appear on singing shows!
And lastly, during a WWHL “Plead the Fifth” segment, Kelly refused to reveal the celebrities who were rude to her after she won American Idol in 2002.
“I will say, a lot of them ended up on shows like the one I’m from,” she teased. “It’s funny what money does.” She didn’t specify whether she was referring to past or present Idol judges or ones on other music competition shows like The Voice or X-Factor. Kelly herself has served as a coach on The Voice.
(Hm…Christina Aguilera, a former The Voice coach who went on to trash the show? Or maybe Mariah Carey who notoriously battled Nicki Minaj during American Idol’s disastrous season 12 and then went on to bite the hand that fed her as well? Mimi also appeared as a The Voice Key Advisor for season 15, the cycle Kelly won with contestant Chevel Shepherd.)
Kelly will sing “Piece by Piece” despite it depicting her ex-husband in a way she doesn’t believe anymore
In other news, in an interview on the Las Culturistas podcast, Kelly shared that she’s not striking songs written during happier times in her marriage to ex-husband Brandon Blackstock.
She told hosts Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang that at first, she didn’t want to sing it. But she changed her mind about the song, which she wrote as an ode to Blackstock as a good father and husband in contrast to a father who deserted her.
“I went from hardcore pass to, you know what, for a moment in my life — I was pregnant with my first child and we were in a different place — it was very different,” Kelly rememebered.
“So, I’m going to respect that chapter, and I’m going to respect what happened there. And what I was feeling there is not lost — I did feel that, and that was real at one point…not only for fans, but for that girl that did believe wholeheartedly that that’s what was happening, and that’s what I saw.”
“I know that that’s incredibly sad to think about. But, you know, it’s real, Kelly concluded.
