<\/p>\n
Kelly Clarkson<\/a><\/strong> is back, ya’ll.<\/p>\n The beloved talk show host kicked off her seventh season<\/a> with an incredibly meta performance of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” emphasizing the intention of the latest season\u2014and the series\u2014with the song choice. Not to mention, as always, blowing her fans away with her take on another beloved artist’s song<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I love that song, it makes me feel good, and it’s a perfect song to kick us off,” she said exuberantly, calling “light…a constant theme for us on this show since the beginning.”<\/p>\n “I’ve always said that my favorite part of doing this job\u2014and I stand by it\u2014is finding the light and shining it on people who are really trying to make a difference. That’s exactly what we’re going to be doing this week and all season, ya’ll,” she added.<\/p>\n Parade<\/em> had the opportunity to speak with showrunner Alex Duda<\/strong> following the episode’s filming. Asked to describe the season in three words or less, she reiterates, \u201cFind the light.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s find the light. That’s what we’ve been doing since season one,” she emphasizes. “And Kelly did say\u2014and this is what she’s always said since season one\u2014the one thing we keep coming back to, that brings us joy and gets us through, is when we can shine a light on people just making change in their communities. Just making a little change that ends up having big, like, repercussions.” That was further highlighted in the episode when Clarkson hosted a dozen bus drivers from the Kerrville, Texas area, to shine a light on their heroic treks to rescue nearly 1,000 stranded campers during this summer’s catastrophic flooding.<\/p>\n Parade<\/em> also chatted with music director Jason Halbert<\/strong>, who Duda points out is \u201calways listening\u201d for new ideas\u2014and the fact that Clarkson \u201cwon’t just stay in one genre\u201d and \u201csings everything\u201d makes it a fun exercise.<\/p>\n The man himself compares the arrangements he creates for the American Idol<\/em> winner and her band Ya\u2019ll to \u201cthe puzzles of how to piece things together.\u201d Thus far, he\u2019s put together over 1000 songs for her to perform on her eponymous talk show, and there are \u201ca lot of thoughts put into how [they] piece together\u201d the Kellyoke<\/a> calendar. For example, not scheduling too many slow songs in a row and keeping a cool mix of current and throwback tracks.<\/p>\n The fact that the show doesn\u2019t always air in the order the episodes are filmed makes it even more complicated, but he\u2019s always up for a challenge\u2014and when things don’t turn out quite as expected, he credits Clarkson for being \u201creal quick to not throw it away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOn the fly, we\u2019ll have this whole thing, and she\u2019s like, \u2018You know what? Let’s just make that piano only.\u2019 So we’re really good at adapting things,” he explains.<\/p>\n Parade<\/em> witnessed the phenomenon firsthand during a rare Kellyoke filming in front of a studio audience, as Clarkson worked out the timing of the track on the fly, making minor adjustments over a series of three recordings. It’s a common\u2014and majorly impressive\u2014occurrence, as Halbert points out, “because, you know, her day starts with a briefing. She’s worried about guests and her research and stuff. She shuts off this part of the job and then comes over here, and so she’s trying to figure out what’s working best for her voice in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: Kelly Clarkson and Lizzo Are ‘Serving All the Vocals’ in Iconic ‘Good As Hell’ Duet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This story was originally reported by Parade<\/a> on Sep 30, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kelly Clarkson is back, ya’ll. The beloved talk show host kicked off her seventh season with an incredibly meta performance of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” emphasizing the intention of the latest season\u2014and the series\u2014with the song choice. Not to mention, as always, blowing her fans away with her take on another beloved artist’s song. “I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2059145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[383727,383620,22530],"class_list":["post-2059144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-alex-duda","tag-jason-halbert","tag-kelly-clarkson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Kelly-Clarksons-MD-Details-Puzzling-Together-the-Pieces-of-Each.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}