As the first person to ever win American Idol, Kelly Clarkson walked a lonely road for several years as other stars in the music industry had mixed feelings about her then-unorthodox route to success.
On the latest episode of Kylie Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie podcast posted Thursday (March 27), the “Stronger” singer revealed that some of her now peers initially judged her for getting her start on Idol — something that wouldn’t be so ironic if some of those same stars didn’t end up serving as coaches on offshoot competition series The Voice. “I had no one,” Clarkson began. “I was the first winner. It was hard.”
“People were really mean,” she continued without naming names. “People that were really mean have been coaches. You know what I’m saying? Like, hated talent shows, and they ended up being on The Voice.”
Clarkson won season one of American Idol in 2002, a victory that propelled her to a successful career in music marked by three Billboard Hot 100-topping hits and three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 so far. Ever since the flagship show premiered, numerous other competition series inspired by Idol have sprung up over the years — one of which, The Voice, saw Clarkson stepping into the coaching role for seasons 14-21 and 23.
But while televised talent shows are all the rage now, the three-time Grammy winner added that 20 years ago, “people were really cruel at first.”
“They didn’t like it,” she told Kelce. “It took the industry kind of by storm, the talent shows. It was a very unlikable thing in the industry concerning the populous. Now there’s so many.”
One advantage of starting out on Idol, however, was Clarkson’s ability to empathize with the contestants back when she was a coach on The Voice. The same applied to fellow coach Jennifer Hudson, who competed on Idol in 2004 before joining The Voice panel on seasons 13 and 15.
“People like us who have been there in that audition process, and just being so judged instantaneously, on maybe not your best performance but you know you can do better … it’s a grueling thing,” Clarkson said of herself and the Dream Girls star. “And it’s unforgiving in a lot of ways, and a lot of pressure for these artists that I don’t think a lot of artists that sell tons of records would be able to handle. It’s a different thing.”
Listen to Clarkson reflect on Idol critics on Not Gonna Lie below.
