Ready to conquer Australia by early November 2005 with her remarkable accent, Kelly Clarkson announced her plan to resume her “Hazel Eyes Tour” across the U.S. after she was forced to place several delays owing to a lingering case of bronchitis beforehand. The tour started on December 7 in Hidalgo, Texas, and has added a host of additional stops in Texas and California, not to mention the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. Unquestionably busy planning the rescheduled performances, she managed to win three nods for the American Music Awards for Favorite Female Artist in Pop/Rock and Adult Contemporary, plus the Pop/Rock Favorite Album by Breakaway. All of these merely show the star qualities that she has inside her, making her shine brightly as a real American icon.
Kelly Clarkson, winner of ‘American Idol,’ was born Kelly Brianne Clarkson in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 24, 1982, and then moved to Burleson, Texas. This Greek family consists of a mother named Jeanne; a step father named Jimmy Taylor; a brother named Jason (born in 1973); and a sister named Alyssa (b. 1976).
When Kelly was only 13 years old, a teacher from her high school, Pauline Hughes Middle School, asked her about entering the choir after seeing her singing in the corridor. Before she got there, nobody had really really noticed her skill or even offered her such an incentive that her instructor really helped her in developing her singing abilities. Her engagement in choral and instrumental events had approvingly inspired her participation in a recording career from that stage onwards.
Kelly moved to Los Angeles, California, in an attempt to achieve her dream, following her high school graduation.
There she appeared on television as an extra, featuring on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” by the WB and collaborating briefly with songwriter Gerry Goffin. Her Los Angeles apartment burnt down during that job, and she reluctantly relocated back to Texas in despair, but she was also eager to try a future in show business. Arriving in Texas, Kelly started her life from scratch, taking several unusual employment, including serving as a cocktail waitress, a Red Bull promo girl, at a movie theatre, where the premiere of her film “From Justin to Kelly” was later kept, as a telemarketer, in a store, at Chili’s, the Fort Worth Zoo, sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door for a day, and did other jobs as well.
One of her peers, Jessica, urged her to hold still in the midst of her despair and advised her to carry out the hunt for a superstar for FOX’s latest show “American Idol”. And then Kelly auditioned for the “American Idol” in 2001, along with ten thousand people, which she claimed she didn’t know much about, and tried it out only for fun. She appeared live every week for ten weeks with an unprecedented 25 million fans, performing songs like “Respect” “Natural Woman” and “Without You” She was chosen as one of the finalists. She was selected as a choice of voters, as luck would have it, mostly because of her clear voice and her pleasant personality. And when the final show arrived, Kelly sang “A Moment Like This” a song penned particularly for American Idol, on September 4, 2002.
Kelly, the sole competitor never to have landed in the bottom three, was announced as the winner at the end, becoming the first “American Idol” in the final contest against Justin Guarini with 58 percent of the votes. She immediately won the show’s award for a one million dollar album deal with RCA Records as the newly named American Idol and also reached an arrangement with the Creative Arts Agency. Kelly later went on the seven week nationwide “American Idol” tour in succession, and she sung the National Anthem in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on September 11, 2002.
