Kelly Clarkson was the first
American Idol winner and the first vocalist to achieve success, but her 2003 debut,
Thankful, didn't completely define her outside of the parameters of the show. While the
dance-pop and
adult contemporary ballads on that record were fresher than the music on
AmIdol,
Clarkson still hadn't escaped the show's shadow entirely: since it was a hit so close to her time on TV, it was easy to pigeonhole her as simply a creation of television, not a popular singer in her own right. So, her second album,
Breakaway, released late in 2004, was a pivotal moment for her, a chance to prove that she was not a one-hit wonder, a chance to prove that she could have a real, vibrant career. Happily,
Breakaway delivers on that promise. This time around, the
dance-pop elements have been almost entirely stripped away, and the record instead is a
rock-influenced, MOR
pop affair, not entirely dissimilar to
Ashlee Simpson's
Autobiography, only a little bit smoother and not as heavy on guitars. Since
Clarkson is a better singer than
Simpson -- not only does she possess more chops, but she has more on-record charisma -- she can sell the material even when the slow tempos in the middle of record drag its momentum; she prevents the songs from sounding too samey. While there may be one too many
ballads here, they often are very good and sometimes are excellent, like the light, layered, yearning title tune.
Clarkson may be a fine
ballad singer, but what gives
Breakaway its spine are the driving, anthemic
pop tunes like
"Since U Been Gone," "Walk Away," and
"You Found Me." These are the numbers that sound simultaneously mainstream and youthful, which is a hard trick to pull off, and they are the tracks that illustrate that
Kelly Clarkson is a rare thing in the 2000s: a
pop singer who's neither hip nor square, just solidly and enjoyably in the mainstream. After a bunch of rather blah mainstream
pop albums, including a glut of half-baked
AmIdol projects, this is a nice, low-key relief. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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