Over 20 years ago, we could've never imagined how big of a phenomenon American Idol would become. I mean, on the surface, it's just another singing competition. It would be a local thing, you perform for some judges and maybe you get a cash prize or a spot at a festival. However, singers like Kelly Clarkson could've never imagined that they would see cameras everywhere.
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Her and her other competitors during the first season changed how we understood television forever. The emergence of reality TV can be directly traced back to American Idol's success. Now, Kelly is thinking back on how wild and unexpected that time in her life was.
Recently, Clarkson spoke on the Not Gonna Lie podcast with Kylie Kelce. There, she recalls her experience on the first season of American Idol. Apparently, it didn't even register that the show would take her into the world of television until her third audition. "For all of us in that first season, we literally didn't... I didn't even know it was a TV show until my third audition," Clarkson admits. "Like, we were literally trying to pay our bills. We're like, 'Oh, this might work. I might meet someone or whatever.' Nobody knew it was gonna amount to anything."
Kelly Clarkson Says She Didn't Know American Idol Was Going to Be on TV at First
"We were literally, like, kids — you know, 19 years old just trying to pay my electric bill y'all. You know, and afford the deductible on my car that was bashed in that I couldn't afford. So it was a different thing," Clarkson adds.
Additionally, she expresses how being a former contestant allowed her to be a great coach and judge when she eventually joined The Voice back in 2018. Kelly intimately knows the pressures and struggles that come with that level of attention and scrutiny. "People like us who have been there in that audition process and just being so judged instantaneously, on maybe not your best performance but you know you can do better, it's a hard — it's a grueling thing and its unforgiving in a lot of ways," Clarkson says.
