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Just after Clarkson's earth stops quakin', a tall, preppily clad well-wisher leans past the human equator of handlers, friends and bandmates and ducks his head into her makeshift VIP area. "Girl," Farnsworth Bentley yells across the couch, "I just wanted to tell you that you ripped shit up at the VMAs!"

Clarkson nods in appreciation, as Blender's 2005 Woman of the Year adds another name to her long, strange list of admirers. It's a truly disparate group, one that includes - but is clearly not limited to - teenage girls, housewives, gay men, indie rockers, Oprah, Dave Grohl, the cast of Laguna Beach, your mom, your fraternity brother, five million or so record buyers and at least one umbrella-designing Friend of Diddy.

But wait … Kelly Clarkson? The safe-as-milk 23-year-old Southern girl who loves Jesus Christ and Mariah Carey? In 2002, after she won the first installment of American Idol, Clarkson was just another barely elected, still-untested Texan, one who had made her name on a show that seemed more intent on churning out sunshiney pop-moppets than long-term stars. Now, thanks to some assertive business moves, a stock-taking personal meltdown or two and a song - "Since U Been Gone" - as catchy and globally prevalent as Asian Bird Flu, she's one of the biggest stars in the world. Even goth-metal guitar-rock dudes can't get enough of her.

"I never thought someone who came from American Idol would turn out to be the real deal," admits former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody, who co-wrote two songs on 2004's Breakaway (and who accompanied Clarkson to a tattoo parlor, where they solidified their Lone Star State lineage in ink). "But that was just her vehicle. She used it; it didn't use her. She flipped it on its ass."

Indeed, the gum-snapping girl now singing along happily to Bell Biv DeVoe while simultaneously mixing vodka cranberries for the boys in her band and text-messaging her friends is already a tested music-biz pro. And yet, only a couple of years ago, in the very same midtown Manhattan neighborhood, at the very same late-night hour, she was having a far less celebratory big night out …

"It was New Year's Eve 2003, and I was in New York with my family," Clarkson says in her mad-dash Texas cadence, "and I was not happy at all. [I'd been] arguing with my label and my management. I felt like I was by myself. I would be at my office and I'd be the only one there. I was 21 years old at the time - and I'm fighting my own battles? I'm not that good!"

Sitting backstage at the Garden a few hours before her show, waiting for her Subway wrap to arrive, Clarkson is almost dwarfed by the rider-required bag of tortilla chips on the table in front of her. She's always been a tiny little thing; even her long-sleeved black sweater - emblazoned with a Laverne DeFazio-style cursive "K" in the corner - has fit her perfectly for years now. Yet she pops with so much natural energy (no caffeine, no blow) one almost expects her to start shooting lightning bolts from her fingertips, à la Emperor Palpatine; this might be an unintended side-effect of spending part of her Burleson, Texas, days working as a Red Bull promoter. And nothing gets Clarkson going like her post- American Idol struggles with RCA Records and 19 Entertainment, the management company that first guided her career.

"She would fly me out [to visit], and I could tell she was worn out," says Ashley Donovan, one of Clarkson's best friends since they met as seventh graders at Pauline Hughes Middle School (she now works as her hair and makeup assistant). "She needed to put her foot down; she needed to surround herself with people who care about her, rather than people who wanted something from her."

It wasn't the contractual demands of Idol that got to her - though her new management company, industry powerhouse The Firm, can't wait until the show is eventually airbrushed out of her CV. Her main point of contention, Clarkson says, was that the record label didn't want to include Clarkson's own compositions on Breakaway. But the management breakup had been stirring for years: The life cycle for an Idol winner - tour, record, smile, repeat - had at times forced her into isolation, away from friends and family, and helped damage an already iffy relationship with her now-ex. Even before her fateful New York City trip, she was getting ready to call it all off. "Any time I'd have a huge argument, I'd wind up going to [Los Angeles's] La Cienega Park," she says. "I'd call my mom bawling, because I lived with my brother and a friend, and I didn't want them to see me. It's very hard for me to let people see me suffering. I like to be strong. I like to be able to handle things."

So she phoned Idol creator and 19 Entertainment head Simon Fuller and gave him her New Year's resolution. "I called Simon and said, 'I think I have to leave,'" she says. "I love Simon to death, and if he could have been there every day with me, it would have worked out perfectly. But I need someone, for my sanity, to be with me every day."

To understand why Clarkson would make such a drastic - and undoubtedly risky - decision at a crucial point in her career, take a look at the lyrics for the six songs she co-wrote on Breakaway (they're right next to the "Thank You" section, which contains an astonishing 11 "y'all"s and 20 exclamation points). Considering that Clarkson's breakthrough hit was the prom/graduation/year-end montage theme "A Moment Like This" (from her 2003 debut, Thankful), Breakaway's best numbers are pretty damned bleak at times. It's what makes her live shows a bit strange at times - how many other artists can get a crowd of 9-year-olds to sing along with lyrics such as "It's like you're a drug/It's like you're like a demon I can't face down"? It's part Tori Amos, part Tori Spelling.

"I tend to write on the darker side," she says. "I like songs when you can actually hear the person cry. It's free therapy."

Some of these tunes had been in her head since she was 16 years old; lyrics were written down whenever they came to mind, and melodies were sung into a crappy tape player. Not surprisingly, her latest TRL No. 1, "Because of You," finds her still stuck in her teens, dealing with her parents' divorce. It's a harsh tune - about mistrust and lingering anger - and Clarkson's mom wasn't thrilled about its inclusion.

"When I first gave it to her, she was like, 'Well, are there any problems?'" Kelly says. "Like, 'Wow - that's gonna be out on your record?' And she was OK with it, but it still kind of sits in the back of her head. We've had the conversation about 12,000 times about this song."

Clarkson's had far fewer conversations about the song with her father, whom she sees less frequently. He moved away from the family when his daughter was 6, relocating to Irvine, California. "We didn't have a relationship until five years ago," Kelly says. "And that's just because his family and mine were both really poor. So it's not like we had money to visit or times to talk for hours on the phone. It's really when I moved to L.A. and he just showed up. It was weird; he's such a loving guy, but I didn't remember him, really."

Clarkson's other deal-breaking song was "Behind These Hazel Eyes," a none-too-subtle kiss-off to her ex-boyfriend: "I had literally been alone for two years, then I ended up meeting this guy. Everybody does that - you're alone, and then all of sudden you meet someone, you get excited about it, and that's what you latch on to. It's not so much the person as that experience - that life that you want. You're craving it too badly. And then when you decide that you're going to break it off, you're like, 'Oh god, I'm going to be back here alone, again.'"

So how did it end?

"Horribly," she says. "It's a shame. I'm friends with my two other ex-boyfriends, and it's a shame because we probably won't ever be to able to be."

Earlier this year, Clarkson started hanging out with 24-year-old singer Graham Colton, who was opening for her on the Behind These Hazel Eyes tour. Like Johnny and June - okay, maybe more like Gwen and Gavin - they hooked up as a couple; fittingly, in the constant run-together that is Clarkson's life, she can't quite recall how many months ago it went from friendship to courtship: "Umm … I don't know," she says. "Maybe three? Four? I'm not that girl." She's also not the kind of girl interested in some Marc Anthony-J. Lo soap-operatic duet. "We're not like that. But we will tell each other if something's good or if it's crap."


For all of Clarkson's stepped-up songwriting on Breakaway, the song that essentially transformed her career - the one that stretched across demos and playlists - is one she did not write. "'Since U Been Gone' is the most pop song on my record," she says. "I thought that would be the one that people would bag me for, [because] it was kind of like "Miss Independent": People would be like, 'Oh, another pop radio song from Kelly.' I didn't see it being a hit."

Nevertheless, in 20 years, whether she is playing arenas or working the state-fair circuit, Kelly Clarkson will be singing "Since U Been Gone." At her Garden show, Clarkson teases it out as her last pre-encore number, and when she finally hits the chorus, the floor actually starts shaking - a testament to the fact that Clarkson has started moving beyond her brace-faced Idol constituency and picked up an older (and presumably heavier) fanbase. A to-hell-with-it, relationship-axing adieu with a jacked-up chorus, "Gone" is an audience-altering monster of a tune, one that even got the attention of the normally pop-opposed alt-rock scene: Ted Leo covered it, Bob Mould snuck it into his DJ set and former Soul Coughing frontman M. Doughty enthused about it on his blog.

"First of all it's just a great, classic single," Doughty says. "And she's got one of those voices - it's like a higher version of a trombone: No vibrato. Super-strong. Pure Texas. You don't really hear a lot of voices like that in pop music; we're used to those little-girl voices that the former Mouseketeers have."

Not surprisingly, the song almost went the Disney route. "We were listening to the Strokes and the Hives, some emo stuff," remembers Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald, who, along with boy-band hitmaker Max Martin, co-wrote "Since U Been Gone." "And we were like, 'God, we love this shit. But why can't they write a hit song?' Don't you just wish a Strokes song went to where you wanted it to go?"

While they were writing "Gone," Martin and Gottwald had Pink in mind, and even Hilary Duff's team was eyeing it before they passed (as Gottwald points out, she just didn't have the voice to hit the higher notes). Clarkson wasn't on their list of candidates. "Honestly, I don't think Max even knew who Kelly was," Gottwald says. "He lives in Sweden, and he didn't follow American Idol." Luckily, Clarkson's A&R rep intervened, and now she has her own "You Shook Me All Night Long."

"I went to see Foo Fighters when I was off in Texas," Clarkson says, "and the first thing Dave Grohl said to me was 'I love that song!' I am puzzled each time. The indie guys are usually like, 'Pop, schmop.'"


As Clarkson's popularity swells, so do the demands for her time. Earlier this year, she took her first full vacation in three years, heading back to Fort Worth to work on her new house -"It's a very Victorian, Gone With the Wind kind of thing," she says - and was inundated with friends and relatives she hadn't seen in forever. Clarkson's not complaining, but the three-and-a-half-week trip wasn't quite the relaxing getaway she had in mind. Friends threw parties in her pad when she wasn't around, and the phone rang nonstop. "I've been around someone every day - I haven't been alone for the last three and a half years," she says. "So I just wanted to chill. That was a little difficult for people to swallow. They were like, 'I can't believe she doesn't want to hang out.' And I just [wanted] to sit and watch a movie."

But there is little alone time anymore, whether she's at home or in public. Appearing on Idol yields a strange strain of celebrity ownership; after spending weeks voting for Clarkson, some fans likely got a sense of possessiveness - that feeling of "I made you famous. You owe me. Sign this homemade sweatshirt." Wherever she goes, she is overrun by admirers, often teenage girls or twentysomething gay men, both of whom are nearly asthmatic with excitement. She tries to sign everything put in front of her, and seems genuinely guilt-ridden when she has to stop.

"She just goes tirelessly," notes David Hodges, another Evanescence-member-turned-co-writer. "I think it's because she's a fan of music, and she loves the fact that people connect with her music and so she wants to give back. She's insane with that stuff - almost to a fault, because it becomes really emotionally draining after a while. You gotta pull her into the car, because she'll keep waving and signing."

And then there's the assault of corporate schmoozing. The backstage area at the Garden has dozens of tiny, multipurpose little rooms to hide out in, but as Clarkson darts around the perimeter after her 75-minute performance - sponsored by a large cellphone company - there is no place to hide. Around every corner she turns, there are people waiting for her - some fans, some contest-winners, some a bit dubious. And so, she will meet. She will greet. And she will sign more glossies and pose for more pictures than Tara Reid at a Señor Frog's beer-bong convention.

Even after the room clears out and Clarkson hands over her Sharpie, she's still not finished. One of her label reps has a few more programs that need her stamp, and even though Clarkson must be into the third stage of carpal tunnel syndrome by now, they will be signed: "I'll move her limp wrist," he says, only half-jokingly.

After the required promo rounds are finished, Clarkson makes one more stop into her dressing room, swiftly assembles a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, and heads out into the street, where, true to Hodges' word, she essentially needs to be guided into her car to get away from the fans waiting for her. The last thing Blender hears before the door closes: "Kelly, read this - I wrote it about you!"

There's an afterparty tonight, but all Clarkson wants to do is sleep: "I just want to go for 15 minutes and then go to bed."

An hour later, Clarkson has convinced the club's DJ to put on some Mary J. Blige, and the empty glasses are piling up in front of her. "I don't sweat it," she says. "Jesus drank. It came straight from the Bible that he had a glass of wine. Actually, I don't know if it says he actually drank it, but whatever."

Clarkson may be a Christian - "I've always grown up pretty close to church and with God," she told Christian pop magazine CCM - but she's no holy roller; she'll get her drink on, and when it comes to baring a little skin, she's not entirely opposed to it - in a certain context. Posing scantily as Kelly Clarkson, the person? Not gonna happen. "It's just not who I am," she says. But as a character, perhaps - well, that's another story. "I think naked women are beautiful creatures - when it's tastefully done. Christina Aguilera's 'Dirrty' video? I wouldn't mind doing that. A hot video? That's awesome. Eight seconds of how you felt at a club one time when you're dancing around? Everybody feels that."

There are no sexed-up dancefloor antics tonight, however - Clarkson's not in character, and a couple of AC/DC shake-alongs don't count. Instead, after a few more minutes of DJ-induced giddiness, Clarkson moves back into the streets of midtown Manhattan and into her waiting SUV. She bids Blender goodnight, but as the doors are closing shut, an unmistakable (and slightly tipsy) voice pipes out of the backseat: "I don't know, maybe we should go out to one more place? C'mon, y'all!"