Kelly Brianne Clarkson was born April 24, 1982. Signed to RCA Records, she was initially marketed as a pop musician with her commercially successful debut album Thankful (2003). kelly Clarkson took more creative control over her music and developed a more rock-oriented image for the release of her second album Breakaway (2004), which yielded the highest sales of her career and received two Grammy Awards. Kelly Clarkson has released numerous worldwide top-ten singles, and her two albums to date have received platinum certifications in several countries.


Kelly Clarkson was born in Fort Worth, Texas on April 24, 1982. She is the third and youngest child of Jeanne Ann Taylor, a first grade English teacher of Greek descent, and Stephen Michael Clarkson, a former engineer of Welsh extraction. Clarkson's siblings include her older brother Jason, and her older sister Alyssa. When Kelly Clarkson was six years old, her parents separated after seventeen years of marriage; her brother went to live with her father, her sister went to live with an aunt, and Kelly Clarkson remained with her mother. Following the separation, Kelly frequently moved around Texas while their mother managed several occupations in order to support the family. Being six-years-old at the time, Kelly did not understand why her family had been constantly moving and said that children usually do not comprehend the process of divorce. Eventually, the family settled in Burleson, Texas where Clarkson's mother married her second husband, Jimmy Taylor.


Kelly Clarkson attended Pauline Hughes Middle School when she reached seventh grade. She had originally wanted to become a marine biologist, but during the same school year, a teacher overheard her singing in a hallway and asked her to audition for the school choir. Clarkson told the teacher that she had never received professional vocal training before. Following middle school, she attended Burleson High School and performed in musicals such as Brigadoon.


Upon graduation, in 2000, Kelly Clarkson worked several occupations to finance her demo CD that she had been hoping to market toward record labels. She received few responses though, and she eventually decided to move to Hollywood to seek out other opportunities in music. However, early attempts went unnoticed and Clarkson wound up appearing as an extra on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch to make ends-meet. After her apartment was burned down in a fire, a disappointed Clarkson returned to Texas. In order to make a living, she worked at a cinema, as a cocktail waitress, telemarketer, and a Red Bull promoter.

Follow up:

Once Kelly Clarkson returned to Burleson, several of her friends encouraged her to audition for the 2002 debut of the reality television program American Idol. Entering the competition alongside ten thousand others, the judges Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson were impressed with her voice. She earned a position in the top thirty finalists and week-by-week, performed a song on live television to North America. When American Idol concluded each week, the viewers would vote based on the performance they enjoyed the most. Clarkson sang a rendition of Aretha Franklin's "Respect" which garnered her a top ten position. Other songs Kelly performed on American Idol include Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman", Badfinger's "Without You", and Céline Dion's "I Surrender".



Kelly Clarkson performed at the Washington D.C. Lincoln Memorial on September 11, 2002 following her win on American Idol. Clarkson had made it to the final two contestants on American Idol, and on September 4, 2002, she won the competition, earning 58% of the audience vote over Justin Guarini. Choking back tears, Clarkson performed the ballad "A Moment Like This", the song written for the winner of American Idol, which would subsequently appear on her debut album Thankful. The song's music video was filmed in an abandoned theatre and incorporated short scenes of Clarkson performing on Idol. When released as a single in October 2002, it set a still-standing record on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart when it rose from number fifty-two to number one. This achievement was largely due to the impact from Idol as the CD single managed to sell 236,000 copies in its first week of sales in the U.S.; it spent five weeks at number one in Canada, and remains as Kelly Clarkson's only number-one single there.


Shortly after the completion of the first season of American Idol, Clarkson had been accused of working with a record company. American Idol rules stated that a contestant was not allowed to compete on the program if they had been linked to a record company. However, she was cleared of all allegations, as she had only had a contract in order to conduct demonstration work.


In December 2003, a competition titled World Idol was held in London, England, gathering the winners of the first seasons of Idol from across the globe. Clarkson placed second behind Norwegian Idol Kurt Nilsen. She performed Aretha Franklin's "A Natural Woman". Because she left immediately after the competition she was chided by some in the media for what they saw as poor sportsmanship.