Don't be fooled by the cover on Kelly Clarkson's new album Breakaway. She sure looks defenseless, like an innocent diva trapped in adversity. But behind that doll face (and all that hair) is a tyrant who is going to rock the next few months in the wake of her new cd release.
Breakaway is a stunning departure from her previous dull work. Its rock blasting tracks, incarnations of Clarkson's liberated style, vie for supremacy. It could be a compilation of Clarkson's greatest hits if it wasn't just her second album, and if she wasn't only 22 years old.
The album extracts the true Kelly: a hard rocker as opposed to the American Idol diva. Discovered 2 years ago by this superstar-search-show; the Burleson, Texas native admitted not knowing what she was in for when she first auditioned. As soon as she found out though, she saddled the opportunity and steadily rose to the top. Along with her nomination as the first American Idol, came a one million dollar record deal and a tour schedule you could barely fit in an agenda.
She was given little liberty on this first album, entitled Thankful (after the producers rejected her proposal: "Pigeon Hole This"). Two songs originally created for the show grafted themselves onto the track list. And even though she proudly claimed to have co-written four of the tracks, most of the songs where written for her.
This didn't stop "Thankful" from turning double platinum. But Kelly didn't recycle the recipe for success. "Breakaway" couldn't be farther removed from its predecessor. For one, she has taken a relative possession of the album. She co-wrote 6 songs out of the 12, and the rest of them were written for her by people she was working with (including Ben Moody and David Hodges from Evanescence).
The show was how she began. But this time, she broke away into something more personal as she confirms in her interviews. The appropriately titled record has sliced her artistic captivity.
All the songs on the new album promote freedom (from people, emotions, and addictions among others). There's none of the subdued contentment of her first release, which floated in a sea of lyrics so sappy it was hard to distinguish among them. In Thankful's tracks, her voice riffed out one clumsily paraphrased "I love you" after another: "could this be the greatest love of all" "I never lived before your love". She wondered how she "ever made it through the day" before she met her love.
Breakaway's lyrics thankfully flee from the first release's triteness. Her verses slice through the superficiality, right to the painful core of all intense emotions. Love is not a sunny bliss, it is a miserable addiction: "it's like you're a drug/it's like you're a demon I can't face down", she sings of her loved one in Addicted. When she asks for it, she's not just asking for "stupid love songs". She's asking for blood, death: "are you going to fight for me, die for me/
/cause if you don't then just leave", "I want your heart to bleed/and that's all I'm asking for" she requests in Walk Away and Where Is Your Heart.
Each of the songs reveals a ferociously independent individual. Gone's catchy synthetics spurt out the scenario of Aretha Franklin's I Will Survive. Walk Away rejects an unworthy lover. With Breakaway, the helpless diva morphs into a tiger.
In the background, an army of guitars (her new instrument fetish) add the weight of a musical apocalypse to her words. Farewell oh lithe violins of love. She's also dropped Aretha Franklin and her soul music influence. Instead, she's welcomed a punk-pop (a mixture of pop and heavy-metal). "Breakaway" is basically a more recent, better version of Ashlee Simpson's "Autobiography" or Blink 182's "Enema of the State".
The two musicians from the gothic metal band Evanescence, left their indelible mark. Hear me, a loud plea which (Clarkson claims) incarnates the essence of the record, reflects Evanescence's Bring to Life. Similar repeating piano chords gently transport the aerial voice through the first verse. Then, a guitar and percussion explosion, namely the refrain, gloriously bulldozes through all the delicateness. In 11 out of the 12 tracks, the refrain is loud. The degree of rockness in the first verses varies though, from a whisper (Hear Me) to a confident and relentless accusation (Gone, Walk Away).
Sometimes, Kelly delves further than punk-pop. In Addicted, she practically grows metal spikes and a leather jacket as she blasts down into apocalyptic gothica. Over a minor sequence of lashing guitars, she shouts/sings "it's like I can't breathe/ it's like I can't see anything/nothing but you". This gothica moment is short lived though. She has other influences to squeeze in (including Avril Lavigne), and the album mainly remains in the punk-pop domain.
But there is one big difference between her and all the punk-pop artists out there. (And I apologize for picking a fight.) Kelly Clarkson actually has a voice. She doesn't need to hide incompetence behind exploding instrumentals. Her melodious cries soar high over them (and she masters that higher register like a Whitney Houston or a Maria Carey). Her voice pierces through and stretches out, clear and (even more exceptionally) on-pitch.
During moments of relative silence, her diva solos peak out. In Where Is Your Heart (the closest the new tracks ever come to the last album), her slightly breathless and rusty vocals melt over a handful of piano notes. In the live version of "Beautiful Disaster", her voice bursts with an unprecedented richness and emotion.
Breakaway is Kelly Clarkson's triumph over her past. It is a courageous refutation of what she was revered as and a bold statement of who she is. She'll be rewarded.
Closer elliptically stutters through the three years in which two couples intertwine their love and sex life. Alice Ayres (Natalie Portman), a stripper from New York, comes to London and falls in front of (and in love with) British obituarist, Dan (feminine Jude Law). Anna (Julia Roberts) and Larry (Clive Owen)'s deceptive happiness belittles the previous party's loveless dependence. That is, until Anna and Dan join and shatter the fragile edifice of love and trust which sustained the two couples.
