Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversalKelly Clarkson is putting the emotions surrounding her divorce from husband Brandon Blackstock into song — with some inspiration from country music legend Garth Brooks.
When Garth appeared on her talk show recently, Kelly told him that despite all the advice she’s received about how to handle her divorce, it was one of Garth’s signature songs that really helped her understand what she was going through.
“There’s been a lot of books and people always give you stuff to help,” she said. “There’s so much shame and guilt, and everybody sends you stuff, and I was just kind of working through it and I couldn’t quite nail down the feeling.”
“You don’t want to crap on [the marriage] — you don’t want to say that didn’t count or matter, but you don’t know what to put in it because it didn’t work out how you wanted,” she added.
Kelly said it wasn’t until Garth’s 1989 hit “The Dance” came up on her playlist that she said to herself, ” ‘No, that’s the thing. That’s it.'”
The song is about being glad that you experienced something, even if it ended painfully. The lyrics say,”I’m glad I didn’t know/the way it all would end/the way it all would go/our lives are better left to chance/I would have missed the pain/but I’d have had to miss the dance.”
“All of the books were helpful, but it’s so funny, I guess because I’m a musician…I was listening to ‘The Dance’… and I got the point,” she said.
As a result, Kelly said, she’s written her own “therapeutic” song, which will be on her next album, and then sang a bit of it. The lyrics include the line, “Even though my heart is broken/It was worth the dance anyway.”
By Hayley Fitzpatrick & Andrea Dresdale
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