Word: clarksons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even more amazing than Clarkson's emergence as a credible pop singer is that her glitz-free approach--she favors hook-filled, unpretentious songs, like the addictive Since U Been Gone, delivered with a vocal minimalism alien to her dolphin-shrieking peers--has made her kind of, well, cool. Since U Been Gone was named the third-best single of 2005 in the Village Voice's industry-wide poll of music critics, which a few years ago would have been as inconceivable as seeing The Da Vinci Code's Dan Brown on the list of Pulitzer finalists. "There...
Compared with Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, Clarkson is almost always portrayed as a wholesome, unsophisticated girl with an outsize natural talent--a bumpkin with a gift. She really was a cocktail waitress at a comedy club in her hometown of Burleson, Texas, before an Idol audition started her on the road to fame, but it's rarely noted that Clarkson already lived in Hollywood (she was only in Burleson because her apartment burned down), or that, as a demo singer for Gerry Goffin, the ex-husband of Carole King and co-writer...
When that something better did come along, Clarkson did something unusual for a reality-show contestant--she let her 15 minutes elapse. Thankful wasn't released until seven months after her big TV moment, giving her and RCA records chief Clive Davis time to figure out how to balance the expectations of people who wanted an Idol souvenir with those who demanded signs of artistic growth. The finished product was a pleasant trifle that alienated no one and produced a deserving hit, Miss Independent, but it didn't earn Clarkson much capital with RCA or her management firm...
...encourage people to write their own songs, but in the pop arena, where the career is totally dependent on hits, you get skeptical. Artists with great voices like Melissa Manchester and Taylor Dayne could have had much longer careers if they didn't insist on writing their own material." Clarkson doesn't think of herself as a pop singer--"Rock is what I love," she says--and she's been writing songs since her teens, but rather than argue over labels or abilities, she and Davis, 72, reached a détente. Clarkson wrote or co-wrote six Breakaway tracks, including...
...month after Breakaway's release, Clarkson decided she needed backup for any future conflicts. She and 19 amicably agreed to sever ties--"I love Simon Fuller, but how can somebody you've seen five times in three years really look out for you?"--and Clarkson signed with the Firm, a Hollywood management company whose clients include Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lopez. "A lot of artists tell their managers not to think short term, not to think about the next big check," says Firm CEO Jeffrey Kwatinetz, who handles Clarkson personally. "But when push comes to shove, they want that check...