Brace yourselves — Kelly Clarkson‘s newest Kellyoke performance is one of her most emotional yet. For the Wednesday (June 22) episode of her daytime talk show The Kelly Clarkson Show, the three-time Grammy winner stepped up to the microphone to give one of her most stunning vocal exhibitions ever with an acoustic cover of Demi Lovato‘s heart-wrenching track “Anyone.”
Rather than taking the stage as normal with her full backup band Y’all, Clarkson this time brought out just one solo piano player to accompany her in order to stay true to the form of Lovato’s original recording. “Nobody’s listening to me, nobody’s listening,” she sang, her vocals especially raw on the show-stopping, full-belted chorus. “Anyone, please send me anyone/ Lord is there anyone?”
“Anyone” is one of the most storied — and most heartbreaking — songs in Lovato’s catalog. Released as the lead single off the vocal powerhouse’s seventh studio album Dancing With the Devil…the Art Of Starting Over, it was the first song Lovato dropped after their near-fatal overdose in 2018.
In fact, “Anyone” was recorded just four days before the overdose occurred, something Lovato — who’s long been open about her struggles with drug and alcohol addictions — has since looked back on as a “cry for help.” “You kind of listen back to it and you kind of think, how did nobody listen to this song and think, ‘Let’s help this girl,’” the “Skin Of My Teeth” singer told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in a 2020 interview.
“I even think that I was recording it in a state of mind where I felt like I was OK, but clearly I wasn’t,” continued Lovato, whose new album, Holy Fvck, arrives Aug. 19. “And I even listened back to it and I’m like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could go back in time and help that version of myself.’ I feel like I was in denial, but then a part of me definitely knew what I was singing for. I was singing this song and I didn’t even realize that the lyrics were so heavy and emotional until after the fact.”
Watch Kelly Clarkson’s raw performance of Demi Lovato’s “Anyone” below:
