Idol Chit-Chat
This is your place to discuss all things "American Idol." The performances, the judges, the past contestants — it’s all right here.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

The Last Word on the Kelly Controversy

FOX News reported a few weeks ago that Kelly Clarkson has agreed to release a pop album in 2008 with songs selected by Clive Davis and his team.

So with that news, please allow me to get in the last word on the Kelly controversy.

But it’s actually not my word. This comes from Chris Willman a writer at “Entertainment Weekly,” who sums it up better than I could…

Shortly before the album was released, she fired her manager, Hollywood powerhouse Jeff Kwatinetz; her new one, Nashville-based Narvel Blackstock, apparently advised her to stop giving interviews. Kwatinetz had gone on the record in a couple of articles himself, talking about how Clarkson was getting a raw deal from Davis, echoing her own comments about the need for artistic freedom — but maybe he defended her so vociferously in print, and took on Davis so brazenly, that it suddenly occurred to the singer that "divide and conquer" wasn't such a great album-launch strategy. Anyhow, Clarkson has been inside the cone of silence since My December hit the streets a month ago. Except you’d never know it because interviews she did prior to that are still coming out, making it sound like she’s still trying to stir up a good scrap.

No one’s been at their most honorable or smartest in this situation. Surely both parties have legitimate reasons to feel publicly disrespected by the other. But at least it’s helped disabuse the public of the least true truism of all time: that all publicity is good publicity. Clarkson and Davis are both Teflon-coated survivors, and the only real damage will probably be her candor. If you’ve ever sat in on an interview with Clarkson, you know that she'll talk to you as casually as she might a best buddy, which is disarmingly enjoyable and also, as we've seen, potentially bad for business. I suspect that, even as we speak, new manager Blackstock is giving her some instruction in how to watch her mouth and put her guard up. And though I'll miss the shoot-from-the-hip Kelly, she'll probably need those lessons, if she, too, wants to have a career until she’s 80. Or 100. Er, 74.