Kelly Clarkson is used to making the vocally impossible look easy, but even she had to admit that singing the KPop Demon Hunters Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash “Golden” on the final episode of her syndicated Kelly Clarkson Show was, like, very, very hard.
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Clarkson, debuting a new shoulder-length bob haircut in a visit to Late Night With Seth Meyers on Monday night (Sept. 21), explained that “Golden” was the most requested Kellyoke track during the syndicated talk show’s seven-year run, so she decided to save it for the very last episode. “But that is … that song is basically humans against AI,” she laughed, as Meyers described realizing in real time watching her performance just how complicated a song it is to sing.
“I don’t really understand the inner workings of music, but I was like, ‘Oh, I think this is very hard,’” Meyers recalled. Clarkson said even her two children understood how challenging “Golden” was to sing because she had never practiced that hard to perform any other cover. “We can even show up and it’s like, ‘oh, we have to change a song at the last minute?’ And I can just … we can do it on the fly a lot,” she said.
“But that one, it is very high and hard, like you’re singing hard,” she explained of the tune that just keeps climbing higher and higher. “Like, when I first started singing it, my son, who cannot help but be honest, just kept doing a walk-by in the house and being like, ‘That sounds real high.’”
She said she’d respond, “‘It is Remington! I’m working on placement!’ It took me forever to place it to where I didn’t sound like a dying cat … it’s a weird song to sing life and not feel like you’re offending everyone.” It was so hard, in fact, that Clarkson taped two extra versions for backup, and they did not sound good, at all.
“I was like, ‘that song, that’ … I don’t know if you can say this, but it made me its b–ch. A little bit,” Clarkson laughed.
Clarkson also talked about returning to The Voice for season 30 and how “seamless” it’s been to be back on set with OG coach Adam Levine and newbies Queen Latifah and country singer Riley Green.
And, as an artist who has risen from winning American Idol in 2022, when she was just 20 years old, to releasing three No. 1 albums and singles, having a long-running talk show and Las Vegas residency and touring the world, Meyers wondered what the recent passing of country icon Dolly Parton meant to Clarkson.
“Especially as a woman in this field … she wasn’t just a talent, she was a businesswoman as well, and such a heart,” Clarkson said of the beloved Parton, who died at age 80 on Aug. 25 following a brief battle with cancer. Before they met, Clarkson recalled marveling at the unique “character” in Parton’s voice. “There’s few singers that have that, when you hear them and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ That you’re, like, almost like a character in life. She was just being her, but she was almost like a movie star playing a role like her whole life,” Clarkson said about the “real, raw, honest” quality of Parton’s singing.
Like so many people who encountered Parton, Clarkson, of course, had a sweet story about a time Dolly made her feel totally seen at a large music event, at which Parton took the time to chat with Kelly in a sweet way when she really didn’t have to. “It was a good lesson. It was like, ‘I need to pay attention to this. Make sure I’m like this.’” Clarkson recalled thinking at the time.
The three-night season 30 premiere of The Voice airs on NBC tonight (Sept. 22) at 8 p.m. ET and Wednesday night (Sept. 23) and streams the next day on Peacock.
Watch Kelly Clarkson talk “Golden” on Late Night.
