The American Idol winner, 40, recently discussed the upcoming new album with Variety and admitted that her divorce from ex Brandon Blackstock, 45, largely inspired the work featured on the release. Clarkson initially filed for divorce from Blackstock in 2020, though it wasn’t finalized until the following year while they hammered out the details of their settlement. The exes eventually reached a custody agreement regarding their two children, River, 8, and Remington, 6. In her conversation with Variety, Clarkson explained how writing new music played a part in the emotional journey from her divorce. “When my ex and I first separated, there were many emotions. It was hard,” she told the outlet. “My producer and I were laughing yesterday because I was like, ‘Remember that time we wrote like, 25 songs in a week?’ A lot of those are the ones that are on the album.” “I literally wrote most of these almost two years ago,” she continued. “Then I told my label, ‘I can’t talk about this until I’ve gone through it,’ and it’s just taken some time to do that. That’s one of the reasons we’ve done a lot of Christmas stuff the past two years because I was like, ‘Well, that’s happy!” While healing from her split, Clarkson released the holiday album, When Christmas Comes Around… last year, as well as her Kellyoke album consisting of covers of popular songs. The former judge on The Voice explained to Variety that she hadn’t worked on music much before the divorce because of her hectic schedule, but everything changed once her marriage fell apart. “I was just very busy. There were so many jobs, and I’m a single mom—well, even with being married, it’s a lot trying to fit kids’ schedules in and all that stuff,” she explained. “But then the whole divorce thing happened, and I needed to write it.” Clarkson also revealed that she had some reservations about releasing the album at all, “because you can be very angry in that state of mind.” “So some of the songs, they definitely cover the gamut of emotions; there’s everything on the album,” she added. “It’s almost like the arc of a relationship, because the beginning is so beautiful and so sweet and then it evolves. And sometimes it doesn’t evolve how you want.” Clarkson said her new album will be released sometime in 2023, although the date wasn’t specified. In the meantime, her fans can listen to her latest song release, a new rendition of Dolly Parton’s track “9 to 5,” which she released with the country legend as part of the upcoming Still Working 9 to 5 documentary. More Pop Culture:
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