“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” When Friedrich Nietzsche scrawled those words, among the last he wrote before surrendering to insanity in 1889, little did he know that they would provide lazy musicians with lyrical fodder for the next 120 years and beyond. Think I’m exaggerating? Last month, one clever YouTube user created a compilation of popular artists pillaging the phrase for all it’s worth. The total number of artists came to 37, and I can already tell you a few they missed.
American sweetheart Kelly Clarkson is the latest to dust off the old chestnut. Stronger finds the 29-year-old disgruntled, lovesick, and ready to roar, but unlike Taylor Swift, Leona Lewis or the Godawful Christina Perri, Clarkson does bitterness right. Rather than trundling down Misery Crescent, she delivers her jibes with snarling intensity and roof-raising vocal prowess, making each song a spiteful treat for fans of ‘Since You Been Gone’-era Clarkson and maybe even ‘You Oughta Know’-era Alanis Morissette.
On her most confident record yet, she plays around with rawk riffs (‘Breaking Your Own Heart’), swelling strings (‘Standing In Front Of You’) and honky-tonk melodies (‘You Can’t Win’), but for all the experimentation, nothing feels out of place. At times, it seems impossible that these ass-kicking tracks are pouring from a woman who only ever wanted to be a backing singer – heartbreaker ‘Honesty’ lands like a punch to the gut and anthemic single ‘Mr. Know It All’ is one of Clarkson’s best.
Of course, an astounding vocal can’t always save a song. Exercise your skip button on dud tracks ‘I Forgive You’ and ‘Let Me Down’, and only approach ‘Einstein’ if you’re ready for a mathematical headspin (“Simple math, our love divided by the square root of pride/Multiply your lies, plus time I’m going out of my mind”).
Yup. For all its moving subject matter, Stronger is also home to lyrics so laughable, they let the whole blasted album down. For example, “I may not be Einstein but I know dumb plus dumb equals you”. Unfortunate lyrical catastrophes aside, however, Stronger is a deliciously scrappy album that shows off Clarkson’s remarkable raceless, ageless and genreless voice to full effect. But I wouldn’t give it to your girlfriend for Christmas, just in case.