The Kelly Clarkson-Clive Davis war of words is clearly not going to end anytime soon–or at least not until Clarkson’s next album, My December, comes out later this month. A brief recap: Rumblings about December being pushed back from its late July release date surfaced a few weeks ago, after Davis allegedly panned the largely Clarkson-penned record in a company meeting; the album’s release date was then pushed up to June 26; then, during the American Idol finale, Davis took to the podium and neglected to plug Clarkson’s album, instead extolling the virtues of professional songwriters.
The skirmish continued last week, the New York Post ran a piece claiming that Davis was out of touch and cramping Clarkson’s style; today, in a sorta-surprising show of corporate dissonance, Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman ran an item that opened with a comparison between Clarkson and Courtney Love (!), and went on to blame Clarkson’s manager, Jeff Kwatinetz, for a good portion of the friction:
Today’s Page Six has an update on the Kelly Clarkson-Clive Davis feud, or–as it’s called in the biz–“The Brawl Between Y’all.” For those of you without scorecards, Davis (who oversees Sony BMG), has been none too happy with Clarkson’s upcoming My December album, giving it the thumbs-down at a company meeting in April, and refusing to plug it during the American Idol finale; and now, somebody in Clarkson’s camp has decided to shoot back:
Our insider said, “She wrote all of the second album herself – including the hits ‘Because of You,’ ‘Behind These Hazel Eyes’ and ‘Walk Away.’ Clive hated ‘Because of You’ so much, he would routinely mock it in meetings. It was one of her most successful singles…”
We admire anyone with the gumption to put a bunch of record-label moguls on the front of their mix CD–even though the odds of Clive Davis listening to back-to-back Young Buck tracks are 100 to 1. But is it just us, or does this design look sort of like a poster for The L Word? More »
