The moment you have been waiting for all year has finally arrived: “My Life Would Suck Without You”, the new single from Kelly Clarkson, leaked onto the internet today in versions ripped from various radio and online sources. While it might be un-American to question our American Idol, we have some issues to discuss with Ms. Clarkson and her handlers. Clive Davis, Reba McEntire and her husband, THIS MEANS YOU. In fact, Kelly, you might want to look away.
First off, this song just isn’t very good. The production is overly synthetic and busy, like one of those bad remixes of a ballad one might hear on Z100. It sounds not only cheap – is that a Casio conga drum-fill we hear? – but desperate, an unbecoming look on a proper popstar. And how do those wishy-washy, uncertain lyrics add up to such an assured chorus? They don’t, which is why it sounds unearned, inauthentic and cheesy.
More egregiously, this song contains no bridge: a mistake in most pop tracks, but especially in the construction of a Kelly Clarkson song, where the bridge is often the best part. It’s where she gets to sing her face off and hit “the Kelly note”. In fact, Clarkson has had a bridge on every single she has ever released in the U.S. except her last one, “Sober”. You may remember that, Mr. Davis, as the song that failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100, effectively killing the album’s promotion in America. Why repeat that mistake? And it’s not like this is news to you people: Reba, you stole the bridge in your cover/duet of “Because of You”, relegating Kelly to the background because everyone knows that is the bridge is simply the best part of a Kelly Clarkson jam.
And we haven’t even mentioned the matter of the artwork for her album, but don’t take our word for it. Here’s what Kelly herself says on her blog: “it’s very colorful and they have definitely photo-shopped the crap out of me….whoever she is, she looks great ha!”.
We get that the public didn’t really respond to My December, the album where Clarkson took control of her direction and sound and made bitchy-but-correct statements like “You're 80; you're not supposed to like my album.” to the press in regards to Mr. Davis. But the punishment should fit the crime, and perhaps Clarkson has been spanked enough without subjecting her to excessive amounts of airbrushing, rumored Katy Perry cast-offs and Chris Daughtry guest spots, and a bridgeless lead-off single that manages to be both frantic and boring, like the movie version of Speed Racer distilled into a three-minute-and-thirty-second pop song.
Rectify. All of you. The album’s release date is two months away. You are messing with our original American Idol, which, as far as we are concerned, is tantamount to letting the terrorists win.
Chris Burkmenn
