Following her divorce from Brandon Blackstock in 2020 after seven years of marriage, Kelly Clarkson channeled her heartbreak into an emotional new album, Chemistry, which arrived on Friday (June 23).
“I’ve been working on this project for close to three years now. I wasn’t sure I was going to release it, but I am. The album is called Chemistry,” Clarkson said in a video on Instagram back in March announcing her 10th studio effort. “I was trying to find a word, it might be one of the songs on the album, but I was trying to find a word that really described the whole thing. I didn’t want everybody to think I was just coming out with some ‘I’m angry,’ ‘I’m sad’ — just one or two emotions. This album is definitely the arc of an entire relationship.”
She continued, “That whole relationship shouldn’t be brought down to one thing. There’s the good, the bad and the ugly kind of thing going on. Chemistry can be a really amazing, sexy, cool, fun thing, but it can also be very bad for you. So that’s why I named it Chemistry, I thought it was the perfect title to describe the entire album.”
Chemistry features previously released track “Favorite Kind of High” as well as double singles “Mine” and “Me.”
The album also includes a track called “I Hate Love,” which features none other than Steve Martin on banjo thanks to the lyric: “I hate love, and The Notebook lied / It’s Complicated is more like what happens, so you can keep Gosling and I’ll take Steve Martin.”
Listen to Chemistry in full below.
https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/kelly-clarkson-chemistry-stream-1235360140/