Though her conflicts with Dr. Luke have not made headlines in quite the same way that Kesha‘s have, Kelly Clarkson has well-documented tensions with the songwriter and producer as well. In an interview with Z100 this week, Clarkson addressed her 2009 single “My Life Would Suck Without You,” which Luke co-wrote and co-produced. “They brought up writing credit at the end, because they were like, ‘Well, you changed the song,'” she said. “And I was like, ‘I don’t want my name near his. I want to pretend this didn’t happen in my life, and I want to forget it.'”
Previously, Clarkson has detailed her objections to the placement of megahits “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and “Since U Been Gone” on her 2004 album Breakaway, both of which were also co-written by Luke (real name Lukasz Gottwald). In an interview last year, Clarkson said that she did not want those songs to be released with the album, alleging that Gottwald was “demeaning” and “difficult to work with,” and that he frequently lied to her. She said that her label, RCA Records, refused to release the album without the inclusion of the two songs. (Though Clarkson began speaking publicly about her tense relationship with Gottwald during Kesha’s legal battle over allegations that he sexually assaulted her, Clarkson has made clear that she did not experience a similar assault.) Former RCA executive Clive Davis, who executive produced Breakaway, acknowledged that Clarkson had a painful experience with Luke and his co-producer Max Martin in his memoir.
Clarkson said in the new Z100 interview that she’d asked not to work with Luke again after the experience on Breakaway. “I was so frustrated, because I literally said ‘Anyone in the world but this one person. I will work with anyone you want to work in my path,'” she said.
She added that she lost a significant potential windfall in royalties by refusing the “My Life Would Suck Without You” credit. “There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars gone because of that, or millions, actually. That song was huge,” she said. “But I was making a point to the people working with me. This is how much I didn’t want to do this.”
Watch the full interview with Z100 below. The discussion of Dr. Luke begins at about nine minutes into the video.
