Kelly Clarkson

December To Remember
Kelly Clarkson shows continued growth on latest album

Kelly Clarkson

Overall rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Rock & Roll has never been a genre that placed heavy emphasis on vocal ability. True, there have been some fantastic singers in rock history, but some of the most successful acts in the genre have been men and women that can hardly carry a tune, their success instead stemming from songwriting talent and an ability to craft an image that is uniquely their own. Perhaps it is for this reason that America is so enthralled with Kelly Clarkson. Here we have a young woman who has managed to find her own unique niche on the musical landscape, eschewing an early emphasis on her pop roots (American Idol is not exactly the new CBGB) in exchange for a more comfortable edginess that allows her to expand her range of subject matter. However, at the heart of all of these significant image decisions, we still have one indisputable fact: The girl has some serious vocal pipes. She proved as much performing on live television for months on end and winning over American television audiences with her talent. In essence, she represents a unique intersection of ability and image. It is the synergy of these two aspects of the music artist that acts as the goal of My December, Clarkson’s third album. Where Thankful introduced her vocal abilities, and Breakaway highlighted the image that Clarkson had wanted for her career all along, My December seeks to find balance between the two, and it is a balancing act that, when executed correctly, shows Clarkson as a singularly gifted artist.

Certainly, the balance is struck in several places on the album, and the results often are of the caliber of Clarkson’s best efforts at such synergy to date. The album’s opener, “One Minute,” is an uptempo pop-rock affair that deftly combines dance rock rhythms with female rocker angst, and is sure to become the windows-down driving anthem of recently broken up teenage girls everywhere. It follows the blueprint of “Since You’ve Been Gone,” easily Clarkson’s best combination of rock image and vocal talent. Elsewhere, “Sober,” the album’s second single, solidifies the young woman’s chops as a balladeer, building a sole guitar rhythm into a cavalcade of plucked strings, with the singer somberly, beautifully comparing leaving a lover behind to the struggle of maintaining sobriety from a drug. Kelly even manages to continue evolving her image as an artist, with tracks like “Maybe” and “Yeah” both allowing some country influence to creep into the music, and it is an influence that seems to come naturally to the artist, perhaps owing to her Texas upbringing, with the sound coming off as something of a more talented vocally gifted, youth oriented Bonnie Raitt; it is a blend of sweetness and sadness that may just change the country genre more than artists who are singularly focused on that genre alone. In all of these above instances, and in several other places on the album, Clarkson manages to seamlessly blend identity and ability, even as she continues to evolve as an artist. It is this daring, the bold declaration that she is, in fact, something truly special in music, as opposed to just a perception or a talented singer, that drives the high points of My December.

Conversely, it is a lack of daring that highlights the album’s low points. The failures here are not purely sonic in nature; Clarkson is far too talented a vocalist for that to be the case. Rather, the cardinal sin for an artist attempting to do what Clarkson is on My December is to be boring, leaning too heavily on image or talent, rather than attempting to synthesize both. As such, efforts such as “Hole,” where Clarkson sacrifices her astounding vocal range in favor of projecting a gritty, angst-ridden tone come off as forced and inorganic; there are other artists who pull off the “angry girl with a microphone” act more convincingly. On the other hand, when Clarkson relies solely on her voice, the results are equally uninspiring. “Be Still,” for example, comes off as a sappy pop ballad, with the artist coming off as a blank, cookie cutter singer. There are a million great singers in the world, and for Clarkson to come off as just another voice in a sea of aspiring artists diminishes her strides as an artist with her own image and sonic brand. For better or for worse, Clarkson has chosen to walk something of a sonic tightrope with this album, and the unfortunate consequence of this decision is that one wrong step, one false note or unnatural decision with her sound, results in something that can only be a failure; there is no middle ground.

And yet the beauty of this tightrope walk is that listening to Clarkson succeed in achieving the artistic homeostasis that lays at the heart of My December, which she certainly accomplishes for the bulk of the album, leaves the listener with a unique experience. Success for Clarkson is more than just pleasant to listen to; it is exciting. The album, much like Breakaway, shows a continual growth in Clarkson’s sound, and music like lead single “Never Again,” (see below) which may be the album’s most well executed blend of image and vocal talent, suggests that America’s television audience may have helped launch more than just a great singer. We may have helped discover a star. My December proves what American Idol and “Since You’ve Been Gone” only hinted at, and that is the awe-inspiring potential of Kelly Clarkson as an artist, not just a brand or a vocalist.

Giant Magazine