Kelly Clarkson‘s latest Kellyoke performance is sure to drive Fine Young Cannibals fans crazy. For the Tuesday (Jan. 24) episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the singer and her band Y’all took the stage to cover one of the British pop-rock band’s biggest hits — you guessed it — “She Drives Me Crazy.”
The three-time Grammy winner and her in-house band of backup musicians did the late ’80s anthem justice with fluttering synth effects, straightforward electric guitar riffs and, as usual, Clarkson’s effortless vocals. “She drives me crazy like no one else,” she sang underneath neon green and purple lights. “She drives me crazy and I can’t help myself.”
Released in 1988, “She Drives Me Crazy” was Fine Young Cannibals’ first ever No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It served as the lead single for the group’s iconic second studio album The Raw & the Cooked (1989), which topped the Billboard 200 and spawned the band’s second of two No. 1 singles: “Good Thing.”
Though the three members of the Cannibals — David Steele, Andy Cox and Roland Gift — went their separate ways in 1992, their musical mark on the end of the 1980s remains influential in particular to modern artists. “I remember reading an article about Taylor Swift,” David Z, producer of The Raw & The Cooked, told Billboard in 2019. “She was working at the time with Jack Antonoff in New York on 1989.”
“And she said how she wanted to do a song like ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’ She said, ‘I really think ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ could be on the radio now. It’s that timeless,’” he continued. “I thought it was odd at first coming from Taylor Swift, but it was really cool. It seems like Fine Young Cannibals got underneath everybody and they’re still there.”
Watch Kelly Clarkson perform “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals below:
