All aboard the time machine. With her newest Kellyoke cover, Kelly Clarkson is taking us from 2023 back to 1982 with a song about 1999 — or should we say, the song about 1999, Prince‘s apocalyptic synth smash from his fifth studio album of the same name.
With purple lights (because, of course) raining down on her and her two backup singers, Clarkson honored Prince’s original hit while still making it her own, effortlessly adding riffs and high notes to the track’s chugging melody. “The sky was all purple there were people running everywhere,” she belted Thursday (Feb. 9), warped synths filling in the gaps between lyrics. “Tryin’ to run from the destruction, you know I didn’t even care.”
“Say, say, 2000-00, party over, oops, out of time/ So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999/ War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight/ So if I gotta die/ I’m gonna listen to my body tonight.”
It’s not the first time the three-time Grammy winner has covered Prince on The Kelly Clarkson Show. In 2021, she and her band Y’all channeled the High Priest of Pop with a performance of his iconic 1986 hit “Kiss,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks the year it was released.
“1999” was released back when the year felt like centuries away, on the fifth of more than 40 studio albums released by Prince, 1982’s 1999. The track reached No. 12 on the Hot 100, meanwhile the album hit No. 7 on the Billboard 200.
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform Prince’s “1999” on The Kelly Clarkson Show in the above video.
