The musician wrote “Where Have You Been” after watching the actors’ characters fall in love on Only Murders in the Building
The romance subplots on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building are at times overshadowed by, well, the murders. It’s hard to embrace the story of two characters falling in love while also trying to figure out if one of them is responsible for the show’s latest death. But Kelly Clarkson was enchanted by the on-screen romance between Martin Short‘s Oliver Putman and Meryl Streep‘s Loretta Dunkin while watching the series. It inspired her to write her latest single, “Where Have You Been?”
“I’ve rarely done something like this, but I was watching Only Murders in the Building — it’s Martin Short’s face. He says to Meryl Streep’s character in the show, ‘Where have you been?’” Clarkson said on her SiriusXM channel, The Kelly Clarkson Connection. “He’s like in awe, and I was like, ‘Has anyone written a song?’ Because the song is happy. It’s like you found something that you thought was almost basically a unicorn and did not exist.”
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In contrast to the often wacky comedy of Only Murders, “Where Have You Been” is an airy, tender ballad. “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,” she sings. “Where have you been?/What took so long?/I thought I’d found you/Found out I was wrong/I almost gave up/My light was so dim/And now, here you are/Where have you been?”
The record marks Clarkson’s first single since sharing the deluxe edition of her latest album, Chemistry, in 2023. “I was trying to find a word that really described the whole thing ‘cause I didn’t want everybody to think I was just coming out with some just like, ‘I’m angry, I’m sad’ — like just one or two emotions, you know?” she previously shared about the project. “This album is definitely the arc of an entire relationship, and a whole relationship shouldn’t be just brought down to one thing. So there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly kind of thing going on in it.”
