Kelly Clarkson has claimed she was “lied to” when it came to writing one of her biggest hits, “Since U Been Gone”.
The US pop singer, 41, rose to fame after winning the first season of American Idol in 2002, later forging a successful career as a solo artist. She also hosts her own NBC daytime chat show, The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Appearing on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live this week, Clarkson responded to accusations published about her in the 2013 memoir The Soundtrack of My Life by Grammy-winning producer and record executive Clive Davis.
In the book, the former RCA Records chief claimed that Clarkson pushed back on recording “Since U Been Gone” and didn’t want to include it on her 2004 debut album.
“Well, here’s why... let’s give some backstory,” Clarkson told Cohen to laughter from the audience. “I was lied to.”
She continued: “They told me, ‘Hey, there are these producers who want to work with you,’ and there’s this song and it had dummy lyrics. They didn’t really have lyrics yet, they were like, ‘We just want you to work with them.’ And I was told to write to the song.”
Clarkson recalls that her record label at the time flew her to Sweden, where she learnt that the team working on the song had been told something different.
“I got there and these two people, [writers and producers Lucasz “Dr Luke” Gottwald and Max Martin], were not told that I was writing it and just already had it written,” she said. “And I looked like a fool because I walked in and... the label had told me something completely different.
“And I just think that’s a red flag too. Why lie to me like that? Why not just get me to go there and then they’ll have the song? I don’t like the lying. So that’s why I have a bad vibe with that song and the origins of it.”
The Independent has contacted Davis’s representatives for comment.
Despite the murky origins of the track, Clarkson said she was able to perform it live to fans because she’s “a great compartmentaliser”.
“I can put [the bad vibes] aside and I sing the hell out of it on tour,” she said.
Clarkson previously hit back at Davis when his memoir was published in 2013, accusing him of spreading “false information” about her.
