The singer also touched on how her new music has been the greatest outlet for her amid her separation.
Kelly Clarkson isn't shy about speaking about her life and career, but there is one topic she will not "truly open" up about. In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, the 38-year-old singer admitted that she doesn't want to go into detail about her divorce from Brandon Blackstock.
In March, Clarkson filed for divorce from the tour manager after almost seven years of marriage. They have two children together; 6-year-old River Rose and 4-year-old Remington. Blackstock also has two kids from a previous marriage.
“I am a very open person, but I’m not going to be able to be truly open about this in certain aspects because there’s kids involved,” Clarkson says. “I think that I will navigate a way in which to be open and honest about it eventually, probably via the show, and it’ll probably, I’m assuming, happen organically when someone says something in conversation or something. It definitely wouldn’t be planned."
"But my children and his older children -- there are a lot of little hearts involved in this and while people feel, ‘Oh my gosh, what a loss'... imagine how it is in the epicenter of the storm," she explains. "It’s a lot to process and deal with, just as a family. So because it’s not just me, I probably won’t go too deep with it."
The Voice judge, however, is grateful to have a musical outlet to express all her feelings.
"It’s funny, I actually told my therapist recently, ‘I have no idea how one goes through any kind of huge life change, like a divorce, that doesn’t have some kind of an outlet,'" she says. "I am very lucky. Even from my childhood, my mom told me I had a problem expressing my emotions and all these things when I was really young and that I should start writing. So that’s me expressing it. I usually leave it in the songs and that’s usually my therapy."
The Emmy Award-winning host admits that, just like people dealing with the pandemic, she has good and bad days.
"Some days are fine, you’re laughing about it and there’s comedic things about it -- in a dark comedy kind of way — but then there are other times that are so low that you just don’t know if you’re going to get picked back up," she details. "And then there’s other times when you’re like, ‘OK, fresh start.’ ... I’m incapable of not incorporating it into my music because that is my outlet."
One thing is for certain, Clarkson has been keeping busy since filing for divorce. She's continued to work on her daytime talk show, in addition to gearing up for the new season of The Voice. She even filled in for Simon Cowell on America's Got Talent.
The Kelly Clarkson Show has become a hit, earning her an Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host. Clarkson, however, did get candid about her talk show, also revealing that initially she didn't know if she wanted the gig.
"I will be completely honest, and I have been since the beginning: I did not want this job,” she says. “I say that it’s the dream I didn’t know I had, because I talk to so many people, and not just celebrities. I’ve talked to the people that have been hit hardest in all of this — financially, emotionally, mentally ... it’s really the everyday people on this show that have just lifted my spirits when I’ve been feeling like, ‘Oh my God, nothing else could possibly go wrong at this point, like, send in the locusts.'"
"I’m trying to smile and light up America’s life [and] I’m just wanting to drown myself in the creek next to me," she explains. "I do remember, right before then, I was like: ‘Look, at some point, people in the limelight are humans too and we’re all going through the same roller coaster as everyone else. So sometimes I don’t want to smile.’ I was honest about that. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s all relative to your own world."
For more on Clarkson, and her "challenging year," see below.
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