Weiss EubanksEarlier this month, Kelly Clarkson tweeted that recording a song for The Hamilton Mixtape was one of the “hardest things” she’s ever done in her life. Now, she’s explaining why.
The singer tells Entertainment Weekly that the song’s subject matter made her an emotional wreck. The tune from the hit Broadway musical, “It’s Quiet Uptown,” was all about Hamilton coping with the death of his son — and Kelly just so happened to be heavily pregnant with her own son, Remington, at the time.
“I was a complete mess, but I was like, ‘It’s beautiful. I’ll try and do it, but I can’t promise you I can get through the dang thing,’” she says. “We ended up recording it that next week, and so I recorded it before [seeing the musical].”
She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to perform it live, though.
“I mean, I think you only get one time on television a year that you can break down crying in a song, and I already did that with ‘Piece by Piece’ on American Idol,” she jokes.
Kelly did eventually get to see Hamilton. She and her husband, Brandon Blackstock, made the trip to New York and caught a performance the day after Lin-Manuel Miranda stepped down as the lead. She still hasn’t met Lin-Manuel, but says he sent her a nice email after hearing her version of “It’s Quiet Uptown.”
The Hamilton Mixtape comes out December 2.
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