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From Daily Mail UK

Mr Nasty is my hero! Think everyone hates Simon Cowell?
Meet rising idol Kelly Clarkson

For a singer who is sometimes written off as a girl-next-door who got lucky on the back of a reality TV programme, Kelly Clarkson has shown admirable staying power. The big-voiced Texan was the first winner of American Idol, the U.S. equivalent of Pop Idol and The X Factor, in 2002, and she has been in the spotlight ever since.

Her new single, My Life Would Suck Without You, reached No1 in the U.S. charts and is on course to do the same over here this weekend. Her forthcoming album, All I Ever Wanted, is her fourth studio effort. Considering the rate at which graduates of

TV singing contests are consigned to the pop scrapheap, it's an impressive landmark.

Kelly, however, is refreshingly down to earth about her longevity. Dressed in jeans when we meet in her London hotel, she admits that a little Southern grit and determination have taken her a long way.

'I have plenty of drive, but I'm also a very welcoming person,' she says. 'I think that comes from growing up in the South. I'm open-minded when I meet people, and I still speak with my old Texan drawl.

'People tag me with this girl-nextdoor thing, but I don't mind. I love singers like Katy Perry and Pink, but I'm not really like those girls. I'm not that kooky or hardcore.'

Despite a tendency to understate her achievements, Kelly has a good deal to shout about.

The 26-year-old, who has gone back to being a blonde after dyeing her hair black for 2007's My December, is American Idol's most successful winner, with 20 million album sales and two Grammy Awards on her shelf to prove it.

She is also one of the few performers to have earned only unstinting praise from the notoriously acerbic Simon Cowell. A judge when she triumphed on American Idol seven years ago, Cowell believes she has the strongest voice - 'by a mile' - of all the U.S. show's winners.

Kelly looks back fondly: 'After one show, I asked Simon why he was never mean to me, because he was so horrible to everybody else. He just told me that being mean wouldn't have inspired me.

'So he never said one bad thing to me. Every week, I braced myself for it, but it just never came. I can be as insecure as the next person, but I'm different on stage. Up there, I'm more confident.'

Kelly was urged to appear on American Idol - where she belted out Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick hits - by a friend. She had just returned to Texas after failing to make her name in LA. The show, she says, was her last shot at stardom.

'When I turned up for the first audition in Texas, I didn't even know they were making a TV show. I thought it was just a talent competition. A few days later, I was on my way back to LA.'

The youngest of three children, Kelly was born in Fort Worth and raised by her mother, Jeanne, and stepfather, Jimmy, after her parents divorced. Her passion for music was fuelled by stints in her school choir.

Her desire to succeed comes from her mother. 'My mom was a teacher - she's retired - but she loved her job and that was an inspiration to me. She taught me to try to be the best. I understood what was happening when my parents divorced, but I was glad because they weren't good for one another. I don't regret one moment of my childhood. I was a shy kid, but that's where my creativity came from. I had to entertain myself.'

After leaving Texas at 18, Clarkson paid her dues the traditional way, working as a waitress and singing in LA clubs. 'It was hard to get by in LA, but it was still a great experience,' she says. 'I made some demo tapes and sent them to record labels. But that was around the time of the anthrax letters scare, and they came back unopened.

'That reduced me to @%*%$ because I didn't have the money to send them out again. But I had a guardian angel taking care of me. I was wide-eyed and innocent and did some things I shouldn't have, like sleeping in my car for three days. But, in the end, I was OK.'

Kelly claims to have taken control over her post-Idol career from day one. But her first album, 2003's Thankful, was a typical talent show winner's mish-mash of pop and soul that did little to set her apart.

With 2004's Breakaway and My December, though, she began to find her own voice, inspired by the rockier approach of Avril Lavigne and Anastacia.

'I've had plenty of scuffles,' she grins. 'I was 19 when I made my first album, and my record label wanted me to complete it really quickly. Then they saw me on tour and they gave me more leeway. Every artist has to battle.'

Clarkson's new album combines guitars with the poppier outlook of her debut. In working with co-writers such as One Republic's Ryan Tedder (who wrote Bleeding Love for Leona Lewis), she has given her country-tinged vocals a perfect platform.

At heart, however, Kelly remains a Texan gal. And, with no time for a serious boyfriend, she is happy to focus fully on a pop career that continues to defy the odds. 'If I'm going to spend my life with someone, they have to be really worth it,' she says.

'When I'm not on tour, I go back to Texas. Every woman who stops me in the street is like a second mother. They've all been watching me since I was a little girl. When I'm in LA, I'm working. When I'm in Texas, I'm just Kelly.'

MakePaulaCry wrote:

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Horrible outfit but that's to be expected at this point. Her mic seems like it was cutting out in the verses. But the chorus was kick ass.