While Kelly Clarkson put out a Christmas album last year and dropped her Kellyoke EP this year, she hasn’t released a full album of original material in more than five years. But that’s about to change, she tells Variety.
Kelly says the follow-up to 2017’s Meaning of Life is due in 2023. “It’s coming out next year. And this is an important album,” she says. “I’m working on this in therapy: I have a hard time vocalizing what I’m feeling sometimes, so music is helpful for me. It’s just been really healing. I recorded the record quite some time ago.”
The “healing” Kelly needs is, of course, due to her divorce from husband Brandon Blackstock, the father of her children River and Remy. “When my ex and I first separated, there were many emotions. It was hard,” she explains. “My producer and I were laughing yesterday because I was like, ‘Remember that time we wrote, like, 25 songs in a week?’ A lot of those are the ones that are on the album.”
“I literally wrote most of these almost two years ago. Then I told my label, ‘I can’t talk about this until I’ve gone through it,’ and it’s just taken some time to do that,” Kelly notes.
“I hadn’t really been working hardcore on an album until I needed to. I was just very busy…But then the whole divorce thing happened, and I needed to write it,” says Kelly. She plans to go on tour, likely in the summer, when her Emmy-winning talk show goes on hiatus.
Variety also reports that Kelly will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on September 19. Simon Cowell, the man who was there 20 years ago when she won American Idol, will present her with the honor.
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