Kelly Clarkson Reimagines Gayle’s ‘Abcdefu’ Into a Powerful Divorce Anthem
Kelly Clarkson is modifying the lyrics to “Abdefu” to fit the status of her own heartbreak. On Thursday, during her Kellyoke segment on the Kelly Clarkson Show, the host gave Gayle’s breakout hit a twist, referencing her divorce.
“Forget you and your dad/And the fact you got half,” Clarkson sang. (It would’ve been “fuck you” if this didn’t air at 4 p.m.) “And my broken heart/Turned that shit into art.” (The “shit” part was censored.)
The lyrics reference Clakrson’s contentious divorce from her ex-husband Brandon Blackstock. The former couple reached a divorce settlement in March 2022 after a two-year court battle: Clarkson agreed to make him a one-time payment of $1.3 million, along with a monthly child support check of $45,000, according to documents obtained by the Blast.
Clarkson has spoken openly about the difficulties of divorce in the past, most recently telling Angie Martinez on the IRL Podcast that “it rips you apart whenever you fall in love with someone and it doesn’t work.”
“I think the thing about divorce — especially having it publicized, and people thinking they know the whole thing — the hardest part of that is, like, it wasn’t an overnight decision,” she said. “Anyone that’s been divorced [knows]. That was years in trying to- not ‘make it work,’ because I never wanted to be part of something to ‘make it work.’ I wanted to make it beautiful.”
“I wanted to make it awesome. I wanted to make it everything it possibly could be, and sometimes that just doesn’t happen,” she added. (Clarkson and Blackstock share 8-year-old River Rose and 6-year-old Remington Alexander.)
The new Kellyoke segment comes just days after she announced that she’s releasing a new album titled Chemistry, inspired by her divorce, later this year. (She’ll also host a Las Vegas residency of the same name.)
“I was trying to find a word that really described the whole thing ‘cause I didn’t want everybody to think I was just coming out with some just like, ‘I’m angry, I’m sad’ — like just one or two emotions, you know?” she said. “This album is definitely the arc of an entire relationship, and a whole relationship shouldn’t be just brought down to one thing. So there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly kind of thing going on in it.”