Happy Monday, all!
I hope that you all have had a great weekend, and that your Monday is off to a good start! Did any of you catch the shows at the Beacon Theatre over the weekend? If you did, tell us all about it here! I know that I can speak for everyone when I say that we are all interested and want to hear about your experience with the concert!
For those of you that were at the first concert of this tour, at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino Event Center, I am sure that you all had a great time! Here’s a review from the local newspaper, talking about her first concert, as well as some questions that were asked to Kelly about her songs and going on the road.
By Mark Bialczak
Staff writer
The crowd was young Wednesday night at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino Event Center, many five, 10, even 15 years younger than the 25-year-old singer they came to cheer.
And cheer for Kelly Clarkson they did.
The first winner of the now venerable “American Idol” franchise showed she’s come a ways since she won that Fox TV contest in the summer of 2002.
Clarkson sang her growing cache of pop hits with as much enthusiasm as her fans threw back to her on the stage.
From her first energetic song, “One Minute,” her fans were obviously enchanted. Clarkson’s voice, strong and vibrant, matched the expectations built up from her three albums and ever-growing list of TV appearances. “And you love. And you hate,” Clarkson sang on stage. The fans chose love.
From there, the Texas native went to her pop hit “In These Hazel Eyes,” and the love affair was written in stone. Or at least in the couple of signs that fans held up on the floor.
Backed by a solid six-piece, one-singer band that added the proper musical touches but never got in the way of her lyrics, Clarkson delivered her radio hits and more from her debut CD, 2003’s “Thankful,” the monster follow-up from 2005, “Breakaway,” and this year’s controversial “My December.”
She wrote all 12 songs on the latter, and became embroiled in a dust-up with record guru Clive Davis, who thought the body of work too dark.
Clarkson joked a bit about that line of thought, calling her new songs “twisted.”
“Don’t Waste Your Time,” she declared, she wrote about a loser. The first hit from the album, “Never Again,” she wrote about a “real doozie,” she said. “It’s my most bitter song.”
Also from the new one came the very rocking “Hole.” “I like all kinds of styles. Country. Pop. Rock,” she said. “Hole” she wrote because she’s a fan of late, great grunge band Nirvana. Well done.
Even way back when, Clarkson had a touch for the troubled lyric.
She proved it with “Because of You,” written when she was 16 and made a hit now because she sang it with Reba McEntire on the country star’s new duets album. The crowd sang along loud and proud as Clarkson performed it her way: just her stark voice with the keyboard player’s backing.
Clarkson obviously has a lot of favorite songs; she placed at least a half-dozen of them on her list, as well as one from her mom and another from the band.
My favorite: “Chivas,” the you’re-history song she wrote on bar napkins one night and was caught singing in a bar for a YouTube clip. I couldn’t help smile as she sang, oh-so-confessionally: “So much for true love. I’ll take the Chivas instead.”
Mark Bialczak can be reached at mbialczak@syracuse.com or 470-2175. His blog “Listen Up” is at
blog.syracuse.com/listenup/
I gotta admit that I, too, love that Chivas song! I am kinda surprised, though, that she picked that song as her favorite. Perhaps it is her favorite because it is so whimsical and not as serious as her other songs on the My December album. My favorite song on there is Sober, which is already burning the charts and making its way to television shows, such as “Smallville”. Nonetheless, I think that all of her songs on the album are wonderful, and this is truly her best album yet! She keeps growing with every album that she writes, and I think that her next one will amaze us even more (which, by the way, there is speculation that she is releasing ANOTHER album early next year, as Kelly and Clive Davis have worked out some form of agreement). Either way, I am sure that it is going to be a great cd for all of us to listen to and love!
I hope that you all have a great day! Catch you back here tomorrow! And for those of you that are heading to the concert tonight, have fun!!!!!
Until then, gang! Peace!
