I can’t hold a tune to save my life, so I don’t know for sure, but I imagine there are a few things that strike fear into the heart of singers. Losing their precious voice, for one. Not getting enough attention (can’t relate). And then there is … Kelly Clarkson covering your song.
A practice that began when she was touring, taking cover requests from fans, Clarkson now has a daytime talkshow in which every episode she performs Kellyoke and covers a song she loves. Why, you might ask? It’s simple – because she can, and also she should. She’s amazing at it. I’m not saying every time she does a cover she makes it her own but she definitely shows everyone what your song sounds like when it’s belted by one of our greatest living singers.
I have been a fan of Kelly for a long time, since the original 2002 American Idol days, back when we used to vote via homing pigeons. I think songs like Breakaway and Since U Been Gone are some of the greatest bangers of all time. But I became more personally invested in her in 2016 when she returned to American Idol to perform – while heavily pregnant – her song Piece by Piece.
The song is about her being abandoned by her father when she was little, how he only tried to return when she had money, and about how her husband is good to her and would never use or leave her or her daughter. During the emotional performance, her voice breaks, she fully cries, then Keith Urban cries, and then I cry.
Unfortunately, just a few years after that performance, Kelly and her then husband, Brandon Blackstock, went through a messy and drawn-out divorce. Last year at one of her concerts, she sang Piece by Piece again – this time changing the lyrics to be about her new situation.
As a queer Scorpio woman who has watched straight woman after straight woman be let down by men, like Sisyphus pushing heterosexuality up a mountain, I found Kelly’s lyric change and crystal-clear intent extremely satisfying. So the other day when I was served a link by my algorithm waiter to Kelly covering Chappell Roan’s Karma Is My Kink, I eagerly clicked.
I love that song, I love the queerness of Chappell and her work, and I enjoyed hearing Kelly sing it. That enjoyment kicked up several levels when she switched the end of Roan’s line from “People say I’m jealous / but my kink is watching / You ruin your life / you losing your mind / you dyeing your hair” to “you dyeing your beard” – giving us zero doubt which bearded dipshit she was referring to.
I posted about this on social media and was surprised to get some pushback from queer people who had issues with her covering the song and making it “straight”. In this case, I couldn’t get on board. Hair is gender neutral, and a beard isn’t a gender. There’s also a high chance that the song was originally written about a man.
Vitally, Kelly changed the lyrics not to make sure we knew she was singing the song about a man – she changed it so we would know specifically which man she was singing about. I love this, and moving forward I believe we should institute the Kelly Clarkson Rule when it comes to covering songs.
Usually I am on the team with the annoying people who complain about changing lyrics to align with the singer’s heterosexuality. I’m not talking about songs that are taken and interpreted into a new piece of art; I’m talking about covers that are pretty much exactly the same except “he” is changed to “she”.
There is only one major reason I can think of to do that. Some claim that it’s so the singer can identify more with the song and make it more personal – but didn’t they cover it in the first place because they identified with it? Did they also need to get a job in a factory and go to the bar on Friday if the song says it? These are not mini-autobiographies. Changing pronouns can mess with the flow, and it’s much more distracting to change than to commit to the song as it is written. The meaning is more than just the specific words.
A great example is Luke Combs, a huge bearded country singer, covering Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car and singing the line: “You still ain’t got a job. And I work in a market as a checkout girl.” It is a beautiful cover that is deeply respectful of the miracle song Chapman created, and nobody is staring at the radio like “B- b- but he’s a man? And he said he’s a girl? Turn this off, I need quiet to figure out what’s happening here.” It works perfectly.
Clarkson does a lot of covers, and sometimes she changes the pronouns and sometimes she doesn’t. Some people don’t care, some care a little bit, some people care a lot and some people don’t know who Clarkson is (why are you still reading?). But whatever you think of this issue, I believe all of us, queer and heterosexual and every kind of person alike, should be able to agree on one thing: you are allowed to change the pronouns and lyrics to songs, as long as it is getting revenge on a specific person who wronged you. I am happy to see it if you are being petty, or being funny, or aiming a spray directly at a nemesis. It’s deeply satisfying, it’s spiteful, it’s entertaining. It’s the Kelly Clarkson Rule.
• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
