Vinnie Barone

Music Monday: Kelly Clarkson

Each Music Monday will be formatted as followed: an overview/ my opinion on their said career, followed by the ranking of their top 5 songs. No artist is without flaws, their worst three songs will also be judged and ripped to shreds.

As a reminder, this is not going to be a series where I list no-name songs off an artist’s shitty second album that’ll you’ll hear occasionally in an urban coffee shop. We only grade hits here. I’m not looking for songs that have the best underlying message. I’m not looking for songs that represent the artist’s struggle and triumph over something shitty that happened to them. I don’t care about any of that. We are only ranking the cream of the crop, the pinnacle of an artist’s success. Before you ask, I will not be ranking The Beatles’ songs, as I do not want to tarnish my blog with overrated garbage. If you have a problem with that, or my rankings, and want to make your criticisms known, you can email all of your concerns to VinnieWontCheckThis@gmail.com. Prior versions of this series can be found here.

So with that, let’s get started.

Kelly Brianna Clarkson was born on April 24, 1982, in Fort Worth, Texas, to Jeanne & Stephen Michael Clarkson. Despite not singing until high school, her talents were quickly made known. She received full scholarships to University of Texas at Austin, University of North Texas, and Berklee College of Music, but in the biggest flex of all time, turned them. all down explaining: “I’ve already written so much music and wanted to try a career on my own” adding, “you’re never too old to go to college.” However, Kelly wasn’t done flexing on the music industry just yet. After graduation, Kelly began recording material and trying to market it to record labels, but received little response. She finally got the interest she was looking for in the form of record deals from Jive and Interscope Records, but turned THEM down because “They would have completely pigeonholed me as a bubblegum act.” Kelly Clarkson literally left her nuts on the table because she knew she was better and was good enough to make it. Enter American Idol, a new reality show on Fox and just demolished the competitions, winning the competition and receiving the fame and record deal that she always wanted. The numerous bets on herself paid off as her debut single upon winning Idol, A Moment Like This became the best selling song of 2002. The debut album, Thankful, soon followed. It was at this time, 8-year-old Vinnie knew Kelly was going to be a star. For me, the moment was when I heard Miss Independent for the first time. I’ll go into more detail about that later on because SPOILER ALERT: it is in my top 5. The rest of the album stunk, but I was a trailblazer because most people didn’t hear the star potential in Kelly until her 2004 follow up album, Breakaway. Speaking of that, Kelly was sick of having the American Idol image and wanted to create her own identity, so she once again bet on herself and decided to Breakaway from her American Idol record deal and She earned two Grammy’s for her troubles and gave us four top 10 hits (Breakaway 6, Since U Been Gone 2, Behind These Hazel Eyes 6, Because of You 7), and another song at number 12 (Walk Away). Her third album, My December, was released in 2007 and gave us a forgotten top 10 hit (Never Again). Rest of the album was meh, very forgettable. All I Ever Wanted was put out in 2009 and while personally, I’m not a fan, it did give us a top 20 (I Do Not Hook Up), top 15 (Already Gone), and a number one hit (My Life Would Suck Without You). You might be noticing a pattern of her releasing music 2-3 years apart, and that trend continues with her 2011 release of Stronger and gave Kelly another top 10 hit (Mr. Know It All) and a number one song as well (Stronger). She then followed this up by ripping a page out of the Mariah Carey playbook and try to get a consistent bag with a Christmas bag and while I guess it sold well in 2013 I haven’t heard anything from it get consistent airplay during the holidays.

Her career is way longer than I thought and it’s taking too long to write so I’m going to get into the rankings now. If you want to read about Kelly Clarkson post-2013 just check her Wikipedia out. Let’s grade the hits.

5. Never Again: this is the underrated hit off of My December that I mentioned earlier. This is one of the ultimate, epic, angry, “fuck you” songs out there and it deserves to be on every single one of the “Get over that asshole” mixtapes you make for your friends when they get dumped.

4. Miss Independent: I have to bring this fact up any chance I get: Ne-Yo and Kelly Clarkson both have songs titled Miss Independent and Because of You. I think Kelly has the better Miss Independent while Ne-Yo has the better Because of You, but that’s a debate for another time.

3. Breakaway: I still can’t believe nor get over this album. The fact that Kelly Clarkson transcended the universe by opening an album with this, ‘Since U Been Gone’, ‘Behind These Hazel Eyes‘ and ‘Because of You‘ back-to-back-to-back-back is unheard of.

2. Since U Been Gone: Imagine the energy in the room when Kelly Clarkson decided to not spell the ‘you’ in the title. The power! This song never reached number one on the Billboard chart OR my rankings, it was close but it’ll always be the bridesmaid, never the bride. Still slaps though. .

1.Behind These Hazel Eyes: From the moment I decided to rank Kelly Clarkson’s Songs I knew this would be a two-dog race for the top spot. Since U Been Gone gets all the recognition but this song is the true goat. I went back and forth on one and two more than I’d like to admit, so much that I actually woke up at 2:30 am this morning and decided to switch them. This ranking is final, it is this song.

Toughest Omission: Walk Away: It’s true that this song is on most people’s top 5 Kelly Clarkson songs, and this song has legit arguments to be there, not on this list though, too many bops, had to make cuts somewhere.

I really did think hard about this list, and it’s tough to make the top three songs off of the same album, but that just shows you how good the Breakaway album is. I could have easily put Breakaway the song in this top 5 too, and maybe I should have, but it’s not your list, it’s mine. Also I totally did not realize Walk Away was on this album as it was released as a single in 2006, 2 years after the album came out. This next section of the blog is normally where I talk about the worst Kelly Clarksongs but instead I’m going to make my pitch on why Kelly Clarkson should perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

  • Open with ‘Miss Independent‘
  • Transition that into ‘My Life Would Suck Without You“
  • Parlay that into “Stronger“
  • Get a band/secondary act to play some popular song so she can do a costume change
  • Have Kelly then come out in a wedding dress to perform ‘Behind These Hazel Eyes’
  • Rip the dress off in non Janet Jackson fashion and begin the performance of ‘Walk Away‘
  • Bring out Reba McEntire to perform ‘Because of You‘
  • Time to perform Breakaway/ Since U Been Gone for the finale

I need to make this happen, I really hope CBS, NBC, and Fox read the DMs I sent them with this plan.

Your Turn

If you had a blog and were to rank every Kelly Clarkson song that hit top 20 on the charts, what are your top 5?

TitleYearPeak chart positionsAlbum
A Moment Like This20021Thankful
Miss Independent20039Thankful
Breakaway20046Breakaway
Since U Been Gone20042Breakaway
Behind These Hazel Eyes20056Breakaway
Because of You20057Breakaway
Walk Away200612Breakaway
Never Again20078My December
My Life Would Suck Without You20091All I Ever Wanted
I Do Not Hook Up201320All I Ever Wanted
Already Gone 201713All I Ever Wanted
Mr. Know It All201110Stronger
Stronger20121Stronger
Underneath the Tree201312Wrapped in Red
Heartbeat Song201520Piece by Piece
Piece by Piece20158Piece by Piece

Leave a comment