Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 25/06/07
Label: RCA

Kelly Clarkson deserves the admiration and respect of everyone. Fan, detractor or indifferent bystander with as much interest in the career of the first winner of "American Idol" as Simon Cowell has in the fortunes of Rik Waller, all should appreciate her brave stand and for having the courage of her convictions. Then, once praise has been duly heaped, spare a thought for the fact that she's just about to discover that artistic bravery and career suicide are all too often one and the same.

Kelly Clarkson, who cast off TV talent show stigma by reinventing herself as multi-platinum queen of pop-rock with the big chorused guitar anthems of her second album, 2005's "Breakaway", has gone to war with her record label's boss. Unfortunately that just happens to be legendary music mogul Clive Davis, the only non-musician to be inducted into the Rock'N'Roll Hall Of Fame, having shaped the careers of Santana, Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys.

With third album, "My December", Clarkson wanted to reinforce her rock credentials; to establish herself as a deep-thinking, emotionally charged, credible artist. Davis thought it needed to be more pop. When her management sided with Davis, Clarkson sacked them. The bitter battle spilled out into the tabloids and eventually Clarkson got her way. Yet victory could be short-lived. To say that she needs the album to work is an understatement.

Clarkson desperately needs to prove Davis wrong, yet typically, "My December" isn't the album to do it. Even forgetting the need to live up to "Breakaway"'s 11 million sales, it's not a successful album. While it checks all of Clarkson's requirements - intelligent, credible, worthy - it misses her ultimate target of being affecting and engaging due to the fact that by the halfway mark it's faded into the background as an indistinct, slightly whiney noise.

Bitter anthem "Never Again" and dance-rock chant "One Minute" get hopes up early that she might just pull off her credible rock transformation. But then again, if the album had a plentiful supply of such infectious winners, Davis probably wouldn't have had a problem with it. As it is, for the most part it's a blur of angst and anguish, delivered with sleazy guitars or acoustic introspection, but nothing to make it actually hurt.

The Prince-lite blues-funk of "Yeah" and the comparatively catchy "Can I Have A Kiss" pull it back from the brink of disaster right at the last minute, but they're too late to make good the album. Poetic and heartfelt as "My December" is, it does nothing to disprove Clive Davis' assertion that a memorable chorus, pop, rock or otherwise, is a good thing.

    by Dan Gennoe