| Kelly Clarkson
My December
by Sal Cinquemani
Posted: June 14, 2007in response to rumors that label boss Clive Davis didn't want to release My December because he deemed it too "negative" and reportedly offered her $10 million to scrap some of the songs, Kelly Clarkson told Entertainment Weekly: "It's not Metallica." Hell, it's not even Evanescence. The press about the album, not to mention fans' hysterical, hypercritical reaction to its lead single, "Never Again," which is a slightly harder, slightly less immediate version of almost every song on Breakaway, would have us believe that My December is some radical departure for Clarkson, but it's really just a logical progression—if not exactly a refinement—of the fingerless-gloved rock-chick persona the singer has created for herself in the years since her crowning as the premier American Idol.Complicating matters, of course, is the fact that Clarkson cancelled her arena tour due to poor ticket sales and ditched her manager just two weeks before the album's release (which will only fuel rumors of internal turmoil surrounding the project), and "Never Again" is under-performing on the charts—as if anything that followed the... |
