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Kelly Clarkson Debuts 'Mr. Know It All,' Is Awesome on Live Webcast
Incredibly endearing American Idol champ Kelly Clarkson debuted her new single, "Mr. Know It All," and spent a half-hour answering fans' questions during a live webcast on her official website this afternoon. She took questions directly from fans via her iPad with no publicist scanning them first. She sputtered and laughed and blushed and nearly let a few secrets out of the bag. "I'm a giant nerd, so it's hard not to be grounded when you're not cool enough not to be grounded," she admitted at one point. "I obviously don't care about being famous because I'm a giant nerd." Kelly Clarkson, are you currently accepting marriage proposals?
Right, so, what did we learn? Clarkson's new tune is a more subtle, gentle pop song than the roaring, guitar-driven singles she usually unleashes when a new album is on the way (hear it above or on her site). And she is very excited about it. "I hope y'all like the song. If you don't, lie to me," she instructed.
"Whooo! That's my first single. I haven't had new music out in a while... I'm excited!" she shouted (yes, shouted!) when the song finished playing. This is true -- Clarkson's last album was 2009's All I Ever Wanted, and she has been laying low in her time out of the spotlight. So what's she been up to? Clarkson had a root canal and documented her painful recovery on Facebook. She got a new pet goat and likely named him right after the aforementioned root canal: "My mom just got me a baby goat that is a week old and I named him Nitric (Nitrous).....yes I named him after laughing gas
." She listened to a lot of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. She started a new girl group called Already Famous with her two backup singers. She remained generally awesome.
"Mr. Know It All" is out September 5th, and her fifth (!) album, Stronger, is due October 25th. Clarkson described the disc as "super sassy" and said its name came from the fact that "the entire album is very much about empowerment and strength overall. I love being sassy, I love having attitude, I love raining on boys' parades." She said this time around her producers strove to capture how she sounds live, noting that on pop albums, "Things can sound highly compressed and Auto-Tuned -- this album is not like that at all."
Clarkson was visibly nervous and tried not to let her impulse to yap get her in too much trouble. She's "pretty sure" she'll tour in January, and said the disc includes one duet "with someone affiliated with American Idol" (a female someone). The other planned duet with AI alum Chris Daughtry didn't make the LP because it didn't fit in, sonically, but she promises to release it at some point. Here's the rest of the best nuggets:
• New track "You Love Me" "sounds like it's a happy song, but you know me! I put that dark twist on it, so it's not happy. I wrote it in 15 minutes and I just had a real bad day."
• "It's fun to keep changing... I'm not afraid to do the Jason Aldean song with him, I love country music but at the same time... I love pop. On Idol we got to perform a lot of different genres of music and I think that's a really good setup for how people can perceive me as an artist. I'm going to be the annoying girl who shows up in every different genre."
• If you karaoke with Kelly Clarkson, she promises she "will whip out some Eminem, or Vanilla Ice, or Lauryn Hill, and it will be awesome." It will. Be. Awesome.
• Note to those of you who think Clarkson is mad about song leaks: "I'm not even mad. I know people keep thinking I'm mad at the leaks. It kind of ruins the fun. But I get it. If I could listen to stuff before it comes out, I would do it."
• Her favorite song to perform live is "Walk Away" because "I feel like I'm Annie Lennox when I'm singing that and I just feel real awesome. It's just a real big, ballsy girl song and I love that."
• She totally has a crush on Kyle Chandler, who she informs us is "the guy from Friday Night Lights... he's so hot, I mean, if he weren't married, I might stalk him and if you know anyone who looks like him and is single, just send him my way."
• As for her free time, "Usually I'm writing on my off days, or I like to enjoy a drink or two or three with some friends sometimes, or I like outdoorsy stuff, I like hiking and stuff like that."
• She will take her dogs on tour in the U.S. "And they are super cute."
• Yes, she's aware how adorably dorky she is coming off right now. "I can't wait to be made fun of by everybody for this."
