On the strength of 7 unmastered songs (and barring the intervention of the 352 days remaining in the year) Kelly Clarkson's All I Ever Wanted is the album of '09.
One thing bothering me, though, in the storyline of Clarkson's career is the way the (relative) commercial failure of My December and its accompanying stadium tour were held up as proof of Clive Davis's wisdom. My December was more or less Clarkson's fuck-you move, the one where the assembly-line sprocket refused orders and wrote her own material with a small band of sympathetic confederates --
Honestly, without that bit of appealing copy - press releases call it 'backstory' - I doubt anyone could have really heard much of a difference in the My December material: much of it was dark, but much of it was sparkly, which is a fair way to describe Breakaway, too.
If anything sunk My December, I don't think it was Clarkson's rejection of evil-label-exec guidance so much as more mundane facts relating to an industry oriented less and less around CD sales, and perhaps there was a slight bit of sabotage on the part of RCA's marketing/promo machine (not working second and third singles the way they did on Breakaway, though I am pretty sure they were there for the picking on the LP).
We'll see. Here, she returns to the kingdom, teaming up with Ryan Tedder, Max Martin and Dr. Luke, and apparently a guy who used to be in Color Me Badd, and the songs I heard repeat the "Since U Been Gone" trick of importing a bit of ragged, indie-rock charge (the spindly guitar sound on "My Life Would Suck Without You," the giant live rock drums on the Tedder prom ballads, the "I Turn My Camera On" minifunk groove of another). The choruses are big and plenty. Let's see if that translates into the sort of commercial performance her 'rebellion' supposedly cost her last go round.
