Released: June 23
Having become an online sensation with a run of slick covers on her US daytime show, Kelly Clarkson returns with her 10th studio album and her most personal body of work to date.
Following her 2020 divorce with Brandon Blackstock, the superstar put pen to paper and crafted a body of work that documents the separation and her journey through life as a single mum of two thereafter.
Leaning to aspects of her previous two LPs – the pop-oriented ‘Piece By Piece’ (2015) and soul-influenced ‘Meaning Of Life’ (2017) – ‘Chemistry’ is a U-turn from her early work and instead sees Kelly at her most introspective as she navigates an avalanche of emotions.
On opener Skip This Part, she suggests ‘I’m real good at forgiving / But my heart can’t forget the ache before the mend’, paving the way for a run of cutting tracks like the pre-release single Mine and the scathing Down To You.
Across 14 tracks, Kelly appears as a co-writer on 12 and while many of the themes go hand in hand with her original breakup effort, ‘My December’ (2007), innate to ‘Chemistry’ is a sense of empowerment that appears in the heartfelt lyrics of the gospel-influenced Me and the Carly Rae Jepsen co-write, Favorite Kind Of High – one of the most straightforward pop moments on the LP.
She also treads new ground, with the banjo-laden I Hate Love and spaghetti-western Red Flag Collector adding new reference points to her musical armour.
By the end of the record, which closes with the Sheila B-featuring That’s Right, there’s a sense of relief that everything needed to be said is out in the open, with Kelly settling into a new rhythm of life: ‘My heart matters most / Keep the money, I’ll take freedom’.
On ‘Chemistry’, Kelly captures the turbulence of a marriage split in a way that few breakup albums truly achieve and while it may not be for everyone, the original ‘American Idol’ delivers an accomplished LP and a documentation of a defining chapter in her life and career, in her own words.
