Review and photos by Kendra Petersen Kamp
Kelly Clarkson’s Meaning of Life tour is her first headlining tour in over three years. The Grand Rapids, Michigan show at Van Andel Arena was the 8th stop on this tour, landing on Valentine’s Day. When Clarkson’s opener Kelsea Ballerini asked the crowd, “how many people are here on dates?” a modest size of the room cheered, but the audience that responded to, “how many people are here for a girls night?” won the volume measure by far. This Valentine’s Day was more about loving yourself, your friends and maybe your mom.
When the lights go down on this tour, a career-spanning montage preps the audience for Clarkson’s rise from underneath the catwalk in the middle of the crowd. As the montage ended and the cheering began, Clarkson raptured the attention of the audience with an a capella rendition of her American Idol-winning song “A Moment Like This” before bringing her full band into the gospel-tinged title track of her newest album, “Meaning of Life.”
Despite declaring throughout the night how much she loves depressing songs, Kelly has dominated pop charts over the last two decades by transforming deep hurt into earnest, exuberant joy. As one of the first real pop stars made by reality TV, she’s embraced a true ability to show the way her life intersects with her art, prompting her fans to leave shows like this one proclaiming her open nature and “realness”.
Kelly’s intentionality and ability to bring others up with her became apparent throughout the night. While Clarkson thanked her openers (Brynn Cartelli and Kelsea Ballerini) early in the show, she told the audience she just reached, “that point in life where you only wanna work with people you like. I guess that means I just end up touring with women!” Both young women have history with Clarkson: Cartelli won season 14 of The Voice on Team Kelly as the youngest winner on the series so far, while Ballerini told the audience that she was encouraged to be a singer when, at 12 years old, she saw Kelly’s eyes winking at her from the “Behind These Hazel Eyes” tour video screen.
Clarkson might as well have winked at each individual fan on Thursday night. Between songs, Kelly works the crowd with a specifically personal touch (good practice for the variety show she’ll be hosting on NBC this fall). Early in the show, as she talked to a mom and daughter there for the 9-year-old’s first concert, Kelly remarked, “You’re about to go through junior high. I’ve had some kids go through that, good luck Mom.” When she came across another mother and daughter pair with a “Sing ‘My Girl’ with my girl” sign, she invited that daughter up for the live section later in the show.
After performing “better off without you” hits like “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and “Breakaway,” Kelly told the audience that she keeps changing the production on the following song so that she doesn’t cry in the middle of it. When she wrote this song, she explained, she was pregnant with her youngest daughter, thinking about her values and goals for life. While some people might want to win a Grammy, she decided her ultimate goal is to have a successful marriage. Kelly makes it through “Piece by Piece,” a moving autobiographical song about moving on from the pain of her father’s abandonment and opening up into the goodness of faithful and restorative relationships. Kelly Clarkson, once again, redeemed heartache by turning it into a proclamation: “I did it! I didn’t bawl!”
Every night of tour, Kelly does a segment called #AMinuteAndAGlassOfWine, streamed live to Facebook. Set with a video screen backdrop of a brick wall and neon sign of the hashtag, Clarkson stands barefoot at a mic and talks, with an audience that laughs generously. This is the peak of her stage presence: stand up comedy with a millennial, wine-mom twist. This, of course, is topped off with a piano-backed ballad about heartbreak (“Jealous” by Labrinth). At the end of the Grand Rapids show’s segment, Kelly brought up the crowd member, Megan, from earlier in the show. This was her fifth time attending a Kelly Clarkson concert and she seemed right at home on the stage. While the two duetted on “My Girl” by The Temptations, Kelly was surprised by her guest’s voice and quipped,“Turning my chair! Turning my chair!” As it turns out, Megan has auditioned for The Voice three times, specifically hoping to appear on Kelly’s seasons.
Clarkson refers to her role on The Voice often throughout the show. She loves it, and enjoys the opportunity to give back to a system that gives people a chance to make their dreams come true, as American Idol did for her. It’s encouraging, in a world with cracking media institutions, to see someone so fully invested in bringing good out of structures that seem designed to bring people down. It’s clear that she doesn’t do this alone. Even as she sang her very first album single “Miss Independent” as the main set’s closer, she brought out Cartelli and Ballerini to perform it with her. It takes a village to raise a voice.
Nothing in the show, however, demonstrated Clarkson’s ability to embrace an authentic celebration of life as the encore-closing performance of her biggest hit, “Since U Been Gone.” While she has gotten excited during songs before, this time, she got so caught up in the song that her monitor pack fell off her belt, in-ears disconnected. In that moment, Kelly sang along in the same way countless others have from bedrooms and behind car steering wheels: loudly, confidently, passionately, all while being a little unsure of the key.
