Orange County Register

All this time since she was crowned the first American Idol champ in 2002 Kelly Clarkson has struggled to carve out her own sound and identity — though she very nearly defined it Thursday night with her outstanding and vocally potent performance before a packed house at Pacific Amphitheatre.

Carrie Underwood, that other big-voiced Midwesterner that Idol turned into a superstar -– she’s had it easy by comparison. No question she was headed to Nashville to take her place alongside the rest of this decade’s divas. But Clarkson’s stylistic trajectory has been a warped one, leaving her hard to peg.

Once she got past the standard-issue debut most every Idol star has to suffer through, she quickly became choosier and more involved –- and soon cut a sleek, surefire winner of a pop-rock disc, Breakaway, its five smash singles still ingrained in the brain five years on. Yet no sooner did “Since U Been Gone” become a household hook than Clarkson was turning up at radio festivals (like a memorable Wango Tango appearance at Angel Stadium in 2005) rocking with the ferocity of early Melissa Etheridge bounced up with some Gwen Stefani swagger.

No surprise, then, that her third effort, the underrated My December, would find “Miss Independent” venturing bravely into Alanis terrain –- and battling legendary handler Clive Davis in public to get it released. Then again, it also wasn’t shocking to see her serve up a slight about-face with her latest album, All I Ever Wanted, a work as brightly colored and glossily produced as a Katy Perry (or Cars) record yet almost as heartbroken and insecure as its wounded predecessor.

The point I’m getting at is that none of her four studio attempts has adequately defined Kelly Clarkson, in part because her post-Idol evolution is both enhanced and hampered by that association. She develops slowly -– yet she’s already so soulful and talented and charming, I can’t wait to see what she records at 40, when marketplace expectations and mega-popularity will likely no longer be concerns.

Not that she won’t still be beloved -– she’s much too endearing to be forgotten, too genuine to be written off as just another plastic pop phenom. Thursday night, though she was never without a touch of glam -– dig that cut-up Ziggy-era Bowie shirt she wore underneath her pink jacket -– she couldn’t have been more self-deprecatingly un-Texan and girl-next-door accessible in her hip-hugging real-woman jeans, long and flared enough to cover her bare feet.

“I’m clumsy,” she pointed out after busting her lip on her microphone during “Whyyawannabringmedown,” a song that rushes by with more new-wave energy than I bet Blondie can muster Sunday night at Pacific. “I wish I were Beyoncé and could sing in high heels.” She must be lying: she knows she’d look absurd if she did.

Her everygirl appeal is only one reason Clarkson stands apart from the current pack of women in rock. As a total package, I might pick Pink (far more confident, punked-up, pissed-off) or even Perry (cleverly calculated, saucy, funny), but vocally Kelly shames them and every other peer.

Watch how effortlessly she soars; listen to how she deepens even the most juvenile lines with heartfelt realism. All of Clarkson’s stuff is very, very now –- but to hear her sing live and unfettered is to recognize that she, arguably more than anyone else today, is the heiress apparent to the lineage handed down from Janis and Stevie and Chrissie and Pat (Benatar, that is) on down to Melissa and Alanis and so on. She wails her face off, yet with nuance and dynamics and panache.

There’s no telling what she’ll do in another half-dozen albums –- you get the sense she’d tackle just about anything given half a chance. After she strutted her way through a bluesy take on Patsy Cline’s “Walking after Midnight,” she mentioned, “If that music would sell records and my company would back it, I’d do nothing but that.”

For now, it seems she’s figuring it all out and finding herself in concert –- that’s where everything she already is and still wants to be comes together with rich consistency, thanks much to a sharp 11-member band, including a horn trio that greatly pumped up the shout-along choruses of “Since U Been Gone.”

Granted, it helps that the thrust of her 20-song set Thursday came from nine selections off All I Ever Wanted, for though there’s variety among them –- the watch-out-girls warning of “I Do Not Hook Up” and the defiance of “Don’t Let Me Stop You” vs. the power-ballad yearning of “Cry” and the Cyndi Lauper girl-group joy of “I Want You” -– all of it smacks you hard in the face with a wall of hissy sonics.

It makes sense, too, that “If I Can’t Have You” (not the Saturday Night Fever tune) is underpinned by Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and that she has adeptly reassigned gender on a cover of Rod Stewart’s “Some Guys Have All the Luck” to make it her own, as they say on Idol. Time and again, and especially in moments like those (as well as a club version of “Never Again”), her show reminded just how much this decade’s pop-rock stuff has been a replay of the Big ’80s.

Yet there were departures –- mostly in the acoustic portion, which included that nod to Patsy and a superb scaling-back of “Behind These Hazel Eyes.” Then there was her redo of Janet Jackson’s lustful “If,” which kicked with the funky feel of Prince circa ’84 and allowed Kelly to convey a more sexually suggestive side.

There’s forward motion in all of that, as there is in her growing comfort and honesty in the spotlight, and it further sets her apart. If I were to bet on any of the mainstream stars I’ve mentioned, my money would be on Clarkson to still be intriguing us 10 or 20 years on, still pushing her way –- slowly, always slowly –- toward something new.

On a side note, there are some things worth adding to the ongoing debate over Pacific this summer:

• Still don’t think this place can get loud? You shoulda been here. Made Joan Jett sound like she was on a transistor radio.
• Curfew –- what curfew? Kelly packed 20 songs into 80 minutes and ended right at 10:10. There’s hope yet that Benatar and Blondie won’t have to skimp.
• I need to amend what I said about opening acts and “evening with …” phrasing. I should have said that everything I pointed out applies –- except with Kelly Clarkson, as an opening act (Krista) was added only last week, too late to be mentioned in ads. Some of you, I suspect, showed up on time for nothing; Krista sounded sludgy-dull enough from out at the iced coffee stand that I didn’t care to see her in the flesh.

Kelly Clarkson at Pacific Amphitheatre, July 23, 2009
Main set: All I Ever Wanted / Miss Independent (with a nod to Black Sabbath’s Iron Man) / I Do Not Hook Up / Some Girls Have All the Luck (re-gendered Rod Stewart cover) / Don’t Let Me Stop You / Breakaway / If I Can’t Have You (with underpinning of Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams) / Never Again / Behind These Hazel Eyes / Walkin’ After Midnight (Patsy Cline cover) / Cry / I Want You / Whyyawannabringmedown / Because of You / Walk Away / Since U Been Gone
Encore: Already Gone / If (Janet Jackson cover) / My Life Would Suck without You

Previously at Pacific:

• The Moody Blues: surprisingly strong
• The B-52’s dance their mess around
• Anita Baker fans get caught up in her rapture
• Tears for Fears race against the clock
• Joan Jett rocks … just not hard enough
• Smokey Robinson proves he’s still got it
• Rick Springfield’s power-pop strong as ever
• Duran Duran struggles to be seen and heard
• Heart sticks to the classics to rock season kickoff
• Which Pacific Amphitheatre shows are worth the money?

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