Kelly Clarkson: A Biography

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Her face stained with tears and the confetti that never seemed to stop falling from the studio sky, Kelly Clarkson made “American Idol” history as the show’s first groundbreaking winner. Her voice, strained from several months of non-stop singing, was barely audible during a performance of what would be her first single, “A Moment Like This” and she needed assistance from other Idol contestants to finish the song to its last note. But what was really going through her head was, how did she get here? Would she become a different person? Little did she know that the evening of September 4, 2002 would change her life forever.

Kelly Clarkson, a twenty-year old from the small town of Burleson, Texas had finally made it to the big time. But was it what she really wanted?

In an interview with The Guardian, Kelly revealed that she did not know what to expect when she first auditioned for “Idol”. The whole concept of reality television was still in its infancy stages and “Idol” would be the first live singing competition of its kind where the viewers would ultimately pick the winner.

She revealed, “I had no idea what the show was until the third audition. My life goal was just to be a backup singer. I never intended to be up front. But then my apartment in L.A. burned down and I had to move home. I had no money and I had to sleep in my car for three days. I just auditioned for this thing that said they’d pay you, and it happened to be “American Idol”. I didn’t go into it thinking this would pappen; I went into it thinking it might pay my electric bill.”

When Kelly heard about the “American Idol” auditions, she was skeptical of the process. She revealed, “When I auditioned, I only had a bunch of photographs to my name. I figured I’d get to sing and make some money to pay the bills.

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One aspect of her life that Kelly has not been as forthcoming about has been her romantic relationships. She writes about her feelings in song, but rarely names anyone they are attributed to. What we do know about Clarkson’s personal life is that she doesn’t like to kiss and tell (at least to a person’s face) and that she is true to the person she is involved with for the duration of their relationship.

In the beginning of her career, Clarkson was reportedly linked to “Idol” runner-up Justin Guarini. Their friendship further deepened when the two were contractually bound to the box-office disaster, “From Justin to Kelly”, released in 2003. Shot in a mere five weeks, the film was a musical/comedy that was meant to capitalize on the success of “Idol” and resurrect the beach/musicals that were popular in the 1960s. Clarkson later said of the debacle to Time Magazine, “I knew when I read the script it was going to be real, real bad, but when I won, I signed that piece of paper and I could not get out of it. Two words, contractually obligated.”

According to an interview Kelly did with MTV when the movie was released, she explained, “(Justin and I) We’re like brother and sister. We only kissed once in the movie. And we’ve done stage kisses and romance scenes and everything before, so it wasn’t anything big.”

During the promotional tour for her “Thankful” CD, Kelly fell hard for singer/songwriter Graham Colton, but the relationship ended six months later. Kelly revealed to the German magazine Bravo, “I’m not sad really, because our relationship made me believe in love again.” She was also linked in 2007 to Evanescence keyboardist, David Hodges. She candidly revealed to Blender Magazine, “I didn’t even really like the guy...

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