Kelly Clarkson Reveals the Moment She First Realized She Could Sing with THAT Voice
“It’s just the one thing that really changed my life,” the Grammy winner told Jimmy Fallon about discovering her astounding talent.
Kelly Clarkson’s powerhouse singing voice is famous for chart-topping hits like “Stronger” and “Since U Been Gone," not to mention her many incredible Kellyoke covers performed on The Kelly Clarkson Show. A respected figure in the music industry since 2002, the Grammy winner has collaborated with a long list of artists including Reba McEntire and John Legend, and has also shared her expertise as a Coach on The Voice.
With decades of experience under her belt, it’s wild to know Clarkson actually didn’t discover her talent until she was 13 years old. In fact, it was someone else — a teacher — who pointed it out to her.
Kelly Clarkson first realized she had singing talent at 13
Clarkson recalled a pivotal childhood moment that set her on the path to a music career during a November 2017 appearance on The Tonight Show.
“When did you first realize you could sing?” Jimmy Fallon asked Clarkson, who'd just joined Season 14 of The Voice at the time.
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“You know what? Everybody says, ‘Oh, when I was a baby, I knew.’ I didn’t,” she admitted Fallon, adding with a laugh that she thinks it’s “total crap” when people claim to have sensed their singing talents from infancy. “[I didn’t know I could sing] until I was like, 13," she said.
"I was actually singing in a hallway and this teacher was like, ‘You should try out for choir,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘That’s for nerds.’ And then I was like, ‘Well, if the shoe fits!’ So I joined.”
After joining the choir at Pauline G. Hughes Middle School in Burleson, Texas, Clarkson started to believe in her abilities.
“Everybody asks me how I’m confident and I think music is really what gave me confidence. ‘Cause when you’re that young and you excel at something...” she said before trailing off, “puberty is hard, y’all! It's a crap age. It’s hard, it’s awkward. I had braces, glasses, acne — was full-on just hotness happening.”
Clarkson added that music is “the one thing” that “made me feel really good” about herself. “It’s just the one thing that really changed my life,” she told Fallon.
Why Kelly Clarkson loved joining The Voice as a Coach
Winning American Idol in 2002 was far from Clarkson’s first rodeo with singing competitions. In fact, she used to compete in them when she was younger, and it’s an experience she remembered fondly as she joined The Voice as a full-time Coach in Season 14, alongside Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, and Alicia Keys.
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“I will say the reason why I love joining The Voice is actually I used to do competitions,” she shared in her 2017 Tonight Show interview.
“The only way I was going to make it to college, ‘cause we were really poor, was on a scholarship," she said. A"nd so I used to do all the like, you know, opera stuff in school. All the auditions are behind a big block, they can’t see you. Like the Blinds at The Voice.”
The Blind Auditions are actually what Clarkson loves most about NBC’s singing competition show. “That literally is the thing that separates The Voice for me,” Clarkson told Us Weekly in 2018. “That’s my favorite part of the show. It is interesting to make it about talent first. That’s why I love this show.”
The Voice Season 27 returns on Monday, April 14, at 8/7c on NBC for the final night of the Knockouts.
