Kelly Clarkson revealed in a new interview with Z100 that she turned down “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and “millions” in royalties just so she would not have to share a songwriting credit with Dr. Luke on her 2009 song, "My Life Would Suck Without You."
Dr. Luke, the same producer Kesha accused of sexual assault and battery, initially wrote Clarkson’s hit, but Clarkson did change some of the words and was entitled to a songwriting credit alongside Dr. Luke.
"They brought up writing credit at the end because they were like, 'Well, you changed the song,'" she said. "And I was like, 'I don't want my name near his. I wanna pretend this didn't happen in my life and I wanna forget it.'"
Dr. Luke did receive a production credit on the song, but Clarkson does not sound like she regrets taking a stand.
"I was making a point to the people working with me, going, 'This is how much I didn't want to do this.' I don't care about the money," Clarkson added. "I don't care about, oh, 'You're going to be the most famous person ever if you do this.' That's not what holds weight in my life."
Clarkson also worked with Dr. Luke on her very first single, “Since U Been Gone,” from 2004. In an interview with Australia’s KIIS 1065, Kelly called Dr. Luke a bad person and a liar.
“I’ve run into a couple really bad situations where, musically, it’s been really hard for me because he will just lie to people. And then it makes the artist look bad. And he’s kind of difficult to work with, kind of demeaning,” Clarkson said.
The American Idol winner also alleges that her label “blackmailed” her into working with Dr. Luke in 2004 and 2009. “They were like, 'We will not put your album out if you don’t do this.' It was a really hard time for me. And you know, we have a whole crew to support and people that depend on us for their livelihood, so sometimes you just have to make those decisions and swallow that pill,” she explained. Her label at the time, 19, is owned by Sony, but Sony has since reportedly ended its partnership with Dr. Luke.
Although Clarkson might have missed out on a significant amount of money by choosing to keep her distance from Dr. Luke, he’s certainly not the key to anyone's success. Clarkson certainly had more hits before and after "My Life Would Suck Without You." Plus, take Kesha’s comeback albumRainbow as an example: it scored “the second largest week for an album by a woman in 2017 in terms of both units and sales,” according to Billboard.
