Gig review: Kelly Clarkson

Published on Friday 12 February 2010 19:41

KELLY CLARKSON *** O2 ACADEMY, GLASGOW

WE'RE suckers here in the UK for a cuddly sap (Leon Jackson, Joe McElderry) or a diva-ish belter (Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke) when it comes to our TV karaoke stars. Across the pond, they prefer to pluck from obscurity the sort of down-to-earth, all-American sort whom you can imagine fixing your car or taking your food order when not belting out a note-perfect Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Kelly Clarkson may have become American Idol's most successful winner because she's the ultimate girl-next-door with the big voice, or simply the prototype.

Either way, she's succeeded where many others have failed in forging a wildly successful career beyond the idiot box, by toeing a line in angsty-but-cute pop catered to alienate approximately no-one.

A diminutive lass in flat shoes, jeans and a sparkly top, flanked by a crew of rockers for hire, Clarkson paid lip-service to about every American genre going, with everything from a bluesy Patsy Cline number to a take on the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army. There were inevitable schmaltzy ballads to lower her powerful vocal guns upon. Electro-disco fare among Clarkson's newer material suggested a desire to reach out to anyone who finds the Killers a little too edgy.

Her default setting is punky power pop, and it was the likes of Since U Been Gone and My Life Would Suck Without You that got the crowd bouncing. Clarkson's lyrics are desperately hackneyed, her emotional clout non-existent. But the mother-daughter team sat by this reviewer hooting along in tandem to every word didn't seem to care a jot, and that would appear to be the point.