Though Kelly Clarkson recently released a brutally biting album influenced by her 2022 divorce to ex-husband Brandon Blackstock, she did make sure to at least give him a heads-up beforehand.
On a recent episode of Today, the Since U Been Gone singer shared that she had a “little text exchange” with Blackstock to give him a courtesy warning before dropping her new “divorce album”, titled Chemistry.
“I don’t even remember why or how it happened, but I was like, ‘Hey, I didn’t just diminish us down to one [thing],'” she said.
Watch the video above.
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“You know what I’m saying? It’s all in there, the ride. The beauty is in there, as well. Now there’s a lot of pain, but that’s what happens for all of us,” she shrugged.
Though she doesn’t think Blackstock will be tuning in to her new release, Clarkson shared that she held back for the sake of their kids, River Rose, nine, and son Remington “Remy” Alexander, seven.
“It’s very personal. And I’ve always released personal music – I think I’m that kind of writer in general, everybody knows that,” she said.
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“I think when you have kids… you kind of debate, ‘What am I going to do here?’ So I was very selective about the songs I picked for the album.”
The 41-year-old originally filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020 after being married to Blackstock for seven years. The legal proceedings took two whole years, during which she had originally written the songs.
But the inaugural American Idol winner shared that she had waited almost three years to release the new music to make sure she had processed all her feelings first.
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“I waited until I was like through it. So now it’s like a different chapter for me,” she said.
“So I had to wait in order to put this out, so that I could have interviews and just honestly so I wouldn’t be crying in all of them. It’s very intense going through that kind of loss, it’s grief.”
Clarkson also shared what it was like going through the actual divorce, telling Apple Music podcast host Zane Lowe “Just to be brutally honest, I did not handle it well.”
”I had many sessions with just my friends [where] I couldn’t even speak,” she said.
“I was crying so hard, even before separating.”
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