NBC Kelly Clarkson
“The Voice” coach, music superstar, and talk-show host Kelly Clarkson wowed fans with a cover of Blake Shelton’s song “Honey Bee” during her January 4, 2023 Kellyoke segment.
Clarkson put a bit of an up-tempo twist on the song and pitched it up an octave, leaving fans calling her the “best singer since Whitney Houston.”
“She knows how to put the country in country, the soul in r&b and the pop in pop,” one person wrote in the YouTube comment section. “She is a one of a kind singer.”
Another person called Clarkson’s version their favorite version of Shelton’s song.
“Can she sing anything? Yes. I love her covers better than the original almost always. Keywords are almost always,” one person commented.
This is not Clarkson’s first time performing Shelton’s classic country song. She and “The Voice” coaches Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, and Jennifer Hudson previously covered the song together in 2018.
Clarkson Returns to ‘The Voice’ in March 2023
Clarkson is set to return to “The Voice” for season 23 of the show alongside Shelton, Niall Horan, and Chance the Rapper. Season 23 will be Shelton’s last on the competition show, leaving no original coaches remaining for season 24.
That doesn’t mean Clarkson will be taking it easy on the self-proclaimed “King” of “The Voice,” however. She told NBC Insider in December 2022 that she still plans on winning the season.
“Will I go any easier on Blake knowing it’s his last season? Do you know me at all?” Clarkson told the outlet. “Do I hope secretly that he wins his last season? Maybe. But am I going to let him have it? No! I’m going to work for my artists, and I hope they win!”
She also told the outlet that she’s excited to make her return to the show.
“It feels really good to be back on ‘The Voice,'” she said. “I didn’t know I would miss it this much. I loved getting a team together. It’s very inspiring. I missed it!”
Clarkson Has a New Album on the Horizon
Clarkson has a new album coming in 2023, according to Variety. She told the outlet that the album will include songs about her 2020 separation and 2022 divorce from Brandon Blackstock as well as dance songs.
“This is an important album,” Clarkson told the outlet. “I’m working on this in therapy: I have a hard time vocalizing what I’m feeling sometimes, so music is helpful for me. It’s just been really healing. I recorded the record quite some time ago.”
She added that she wrote more than 25 songs after separating from Blackstock.
“A lot of these are the ones that are on the album,” she told Variety in September 2022. “I literally wrote most of these almost two years ago. Then I told my label, ‘I can’t talk about this until I’ve gone through it,’ and it’s just taken some time to do that.”
The talk-show host added that she hadn’t been working on a new album seriously for quite some time after her most recent non-Christmas album, “Meaning of Life,” debuted in 2017.
“I was just very busy,” she said. “There were so many jobs, and I’m a single mom … So some of the songs, they definitely cover the gamut of emotions; there’s everything on the album. It’s almost like the arc of a relationship, because the beginning is so beautiful and so sweet, and then it evolves. And sometimes it doesn’t evolve how you want.”
Clarkson and Blackstock got married in October 2013 and have two children together. Clarkson filed for divorce in 2020.
“The Voice” returns on March 6, 2023 on NBC.