Kelly Clarkson thinks her fans are “really cool” for supporting her eclectic taste in music.
The former American Idol winner has just released her seventh studio album Piece by Piece. On it, the 32-year-old has recorded songs in a mixture of genres and she is glad her fans have given her that freedom to be so creative.
“People are used to me singing different genres, just from American Idol 13 years ago,” she explained to Rolling Stone.
“That's enabled me to be able to sing something with Jason Aldean and then do something like Run Run Run on the new album, that's a little more R&B/pop, but then it goes into this really rockin' place at the end. But I think my fan base is really cool in the sense that they follow me and let me do that.”
When Kelly isn’t busy promoting her music or looking after eight-month-old daughter River Rose, she does still enjoy watching the type of talent shows that made her famous. But she believes that times have changed, and winning those programmes doesn’t mean people will follow the same path that she did.
“I think there's a plethora of winners now, so I think it might be a little harder. Everybody is always asking me, ‘Why do you think nobody's made it in a while?’ and I'm like, it's not a testament of their talent,” she said. “I just think there's a lot of people coming out right now from these shows. When I won, there was just the one, so I wasn't really competing with anyone else from a show like that – not to discredit my hard work.”
Kelly is also stepmother to her husband Brandon Blackstock’s two children. The Stronger singer is doing her best to influence their musical tastes.
“I'm always like, ‘Wait, if you like this then you have to listen to this person.’ I always try and introduce her to, like, Lauryn Hill or Jagged Little Pill,” she smiled. “I always try to introduce her to stuff that was a staple in my musical experience growing up as a child. Sometimes she loves it, and sometimes she's like, ‘That's old.’”
