Kelly Clarkson Calls Romantic Fantasies in "I Do Not Hook Up" Video "Comedy at Its Finest"

Kelly Clarkson's video for "I Do Not Hook Up," the second single off All I Ever Wanted, leaked this weekend before officially premiering on MTV today. Like its title suggests, the Bryan Barber-directed clip finds good-girl Clarkson fantasizing about making out with a waiter at a Wedding Crashers-esque garden party and a greaser at a karaoke pool hall — but the hot action is all in her head. Katy Perry and American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi helped pen the song, but the video concept was all Kelly, the singer tells Rolling Stone. (For much more from Clarkson, nab her Q&A in the new issue, on sale now.)

Despite its potential to be the Abstinence Anthem of 2009, Clarkson admits to Rolling Stone, "It's almost like everybody reads a book and you get a different message," but "Hook Up" isn't about avoiding sex but rather finding relationships worth her time. "I am all about quality and not quantity with relationships," she says. "It's like, 'Man, if it's not gonna be a quality relationship, I don't even want to waste my time.' I hope people get that message from it." As for the video, Clarkson says, "It's not gonna promote abstinence. OK, I guess it's not not promoting it, but everyone kept sending me these treatments that were like, the obvious 'I do not hook up,' pushing guys away, and I'm like, 'Seriously?' "

So Clarkson took matters into her own hands. "I wrote this whole treatment about how the girl is a good girl, she doesn't hook up. But inside her head, every time she turns around, she's fantasizing. So she's hooking up in her fantasies, but never in real life, just to make a twist on it," Clarkson says. "And it's absolutely hilarious. I mean, to see me crawling across a table, it's pretty much comedy at its finest. The girl's not really a bad girl, but in her head, she's just like this freak."

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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