"I think I can be a very serious person, so I think me taking everything so to heart ... especially when I first started out, anytime I slipped on a note or forgot a word or I'd do something wrong, that wasn't huge, but it was just like, it wasn't perfect. I was very much a perfectionist," she explained. "And I fight that still, but I'm a lot easier now."
That more relaxed attitude shows in the advice she would give her younger self. "I wish I could tell myself 'Enjoy it' because an emotional performance is way better than a perfect performance," she explained. "I think I would have told myself to enjoy it more." Clarkson released her latest album, Stronger, this week, and her newfound confidence is definitely reflected in the album title.
"I've just been doing this for 10 years, and looking back, the past four albums were kind of … everybody going against the grain on each other," she said. "This album, I'm getting along with everyone, everyone is loving the same stuff and the stars are aligning. I think it's because people know me better as an artist now. Producers and writers know me more. I'm not walking into a room and they don't know a thing about me."
Clarkson's relationship with the label might be at its best, but the release of "Stronger" still came with some hurdles. The disc is out nearly a year after it was originally slated, and the lead single, "Mr. Know It All," a mid-tempo R&B-driven pop tune, hasn't caught fire despite falling nicely in the vein of brazen kiss-offs she's known for. Plus, more than an album's worth of songs leaked onto the Internet earlier this year.
Still, most of those songs were not intended for Clarkson's new album. "I write a lot of music for other people, so it made it really confusing because a lot of the songs thatleaked were not the direction I was going for my album," she said. "I make money touring, and with my albums and writing. But a lot of the writers I work with, their only form of income is writing, so when somebody leaks the song, they don't get that they are basically stealing that song. Nobody is going to want to sing it after I'm all over it on the Internet. It's upsetting to me because it's the writer's main source of income. Now they are screwed."
Regardless of a bump or two here and there, Clarkson has still come out ahead of the majority of the "Idol" winners and has proved to have the most promise for career longevity. At the Troubadour, she got raucous applause when she covered another winner, Carrie Underwood, as Blake Shelton and Reba McEntire looked on from balcony seats.
Just don't ask her how she's managed to be one of the few success stories from the show.
"Sometimes I wake up and go, 'How the hell do I have a fan base?' I was with my mom the other day in Texas, and [there was a TV recap on the best of "Idol," and it was showing me winning," Clarkson says with a laugh. "My mom is like, 'Isn't that weird, youwon that?' We're both having this freak-out moment 10 years later. Like, what happened? It's really weird sometimes to look back.
All about: Kelly Clarkson, Billboard, Beyonce, Madonna, Blake Shelton, Blake Shelton, Sara Evans, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood,
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