Kelly Clarkson believes in love again. After dropping the new single “Where Have You Been” on Friday (May 2), the singer followed up with a high-gloss video for the song in which she rocks a colorful, glittery jumpsuit with billowing arms that looks straight out of the 1970s Cher Las Vegas collection.
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“I like my freedom but I’d trade some for a kiss/ Little do you know how long I’ve been waitin’ for this/ When it came to my hopes, well, they left skies I won’t miss/ I was getting so lonely I didn’t count on, count on this,” Clarkson sings in the visual for the power ballad that shifts from glam shots of the singer and daytime talk show host to dramatic silhouette images of her band members in shadow.
The hip-swaying, emotion-packed weeper about finding your soul mate after years of searching was inspired by the onscreen romance between Meryl Streep and Martin Short’s characters in the hit Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. “It’s Martin Short’s face,” she told listeners on her SiriusXM show last week. “He says to Meryl Streep’s character in the show, ‘Where have you been?’”
The song’s soaring chorus says it all: “Where have you been?/ What took so long?/ I thought I’d found you/ Found out I was wrong/ I almost gave us/ My light was so dim/ And now, here you are/ Where have you been?”
“He’s like in awe, and I was like, ‘Has anyone written a song?’” Clarkson continued on the episode that aired the day before the song’s release. “Because the song is happy, ’cause it’s like you found something that you thought was almost basically a unicorn and did not exist.” Streep and Short’s characters got married in the fourth season of the murder mystery show and, in a too-sweet parallel, the two actors are rumored to be dating for real as well.
Clarkson’s band shines in the second half of the video, with the stage bathed in golden light as they come into focus and the singer belts out one of her signature clear-as-a-bell high notes.
Watch the “Where Have You Been” video below.
