In an interview with Canada’s CBC News, Kelly explained about the Halo/Already Gone similarities:
If you’ve been listening to the radio lately, it’s possible you’ve heard the soaring strains of Already Gone, the newest single off All I Ever Wanted. It’s very likely that you thought you’d heard the epic song before, albeit in a slightly different form. Kelly Clarkson collaborated with Ryan Tedder on the track, a dramatic ballad driven by a pounding heartbeat, twinkly piano and swooping strings. Unbeknownst to Clarkson, Tedder used suspiciously similar elements when he produced another recent mega-hit, Beyonce’s Halo.
“Ryan and I met each other at the record label, before he was working with anyone else,” Clarkson begins, gritting her teeth. “He’s from Oklahoma, I’m from Texas; we got along really well and had some of the same influences. We wrote about six songs together, four or five of them made the album. It was all fine and dandy. I’d never heard of a song called Halo. Her album came out when my album was already being printed. No-one’s gonna be sittin’ at home, thinking ‘Man, Ryan Tedder gave Beyonce and Kelly the same track to write to.’ No, they’re just gonna be saying I ripped someone off. I called Ryan and said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that?’”
The palpably frustrated Clarkson claims she “fought and fought” to try and prevent her label from releasing Already Gone as her third single, out of respect for Beyonce.
“In the end, they’re releasing it without my consent,” she sighs. “It sucks, but it’s one of those things I have no control over. I already made my album. At this point, the record company can do whatever they want with it. It’s kind of a shitty situation, but.… You know, you learn.”
- Source
I honestly hope this settles down and people let it go. You have to consider that different voices sing different lyrics, though the tunes are similar. You also have to remember that they’re sung differently as well, that their choruses are different, and the ideas are different. Beyonce’s Halo is about love and support and holding on to what you have, whereas Kelly’s Already Gone is the opposite. It is about love, but it is also about letting go when you lose someone, especially as physically as the Already Gone music video suggests (see last post). This really isn’t worth argueing about, Kelly’s explained it, Beyonce probably will as well in the future. Maybe Tedder will ‘Apologize’ but this is already out there, and like the songs for what they say, and not what others think of it.
