Fifteen.

Enter part one of two, about the tears I cried behind my hazel eyes.

There was a time in my life when I thought I had hazel eyes.

This was back when I was just over a decade old. Intuitively, I knew that hazel as a color leans closer to the fragmented shades of pistachio, but I was a child who wanted to feel special, and I rationalized that the complexities of hazel, not merely green, allowed for the inclusion of brown. My eyes are firmly brown (not even remotely hazel), but there was a song, you see, that I loved, that made me feel seen, and I wanted to stake my claim on that song because it was mine. It was about me and nobody else.

I'm talking, of course, about "Behind These Hazel Eyes" by Kelly Clarkson.

I spoke a little bit, in Six, about how music came into my life. I touched upon my tastes initially settling within the realm of pop and alternative rock, but I refrained from mentioning her by name because I wasn't yet ready to delve into this particular relationship of mine. Now, I think it's finally time to talk about Kelly Clarkson.

(thick_flair). "22 years ago they went searching for America's best singer and, amazingly enough, found it [on] the first try." 28 September 2024, 1:50 PM ET. Tweet.

The zeitgeist of American Idol's premiere season has since been discussed in great detail by plenty of people, so I seek only to describe what it felt like to a child witness.

I remember being surprised that my parents were watching TV, and an American reality show at that—though I didn't then possess the vernacular to describe my surprise as such, of course. We never used our TV except for KSCI's Chinese programming on channel 18, so it was fairly unusual for our household to be watching something so, well, American. I remember tuning in week after week to watch the pool of competitors winnow until, finally, only two were left: Kelly, and someone else.

I know the second finalist. His name is on the tip of my tongue, and I could Google it if I really wanted to. I know he starred in a campy musical film with her after the competition ended, and I know he went on to have a career on Broadway. I could name him—heck, I remember voting for him, for no reason other than I was a boy and he was the male finalist and boys stupidly stick together, right?—but that extra second of effort it would take to do so only illustrates the degree to which I actually cared about him. I didn't. It was always about Kelly.

Honestly, I was too young to be able to fully grasp the immensity of her talent. Years afterward, in high school, in college, and in my 20s, I would return over and over to YouTube videos of her weekly televised performances, chiefly her cover of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" by the legendary Aretha Franklin, wherein Kelly chose to show off just a hint of her actual range. I would also return later, as a Mariah Carey superfan, to her take on Mariah's cover of "Without You" (originally by Badfinger) as well as her post-Idol rendition of "Love Takes Time" in 2003 (not 2022!) to marvel, over and over, at how America really did strike gold on the first attempt. No reality singing competition winner since has ever come close.

That fateful finale, America voted for her—even my mom voted for her—and she won. She starred in that musical film, put out her debut album, notched a couple of hit singles, and might have disappeared altogether had her follow-up not been an actual blockbuster of a smash album.

According to MySpace, one of my high school peers back then admitted her embarrassment at Breakaway being the first CD she ever bought. It was maybe the third or fifth CD that I ever purchased when I decided to properly begin my own collection of physical music (which still endures today).

The Breakaway singles—"Breakaway," "Since U Been Gone," "Because Of You," "Walk Away," and, of course, "Behind These Hazel Eyes"—were inescapably omnipresent. For a good two years, it felt like she had a hit record on power rotation at every Southern California radio station, regardless of genre, regardless of time of day. And, for an angsty pre-teen about to embark on his own prolonged journey of introspection and depression, her songs hit home.

Like so many others, I spent my early teens in a constant cycle of self-discovery. Between my own class, race, and sexuality, my conscious was in overdrive. With regard to music, then, my precocious self decided that he was only interested in sad boy alternative rock bands, but Kelly was acceptable because she wasn't like the other pop stars. She was cool. Her songs were pop, but they had killer percussions and guitars and felt viscerally raw. Her music was real.

The chorus of "Behind These Hazel Eyes" goes as such:

Here I am, once again
I'm torn into pieces
Can't deny it, can't pretend
Just thought you were the one
Broken up, deep inside
But you won't get to see the tears I cry
Behind these hazel eyes

Despite almost never crying regardless of how empty I felt, despite having only kind-of-sort-of dated a girl for a month and therefore having basically zero romantic experience, despite not having hazel eyes, I related so hard to that song. It was one of the first songs I ever heard via LimeWire, it was one of the first songs I ever added to my very first iPod (mini), and it was one of the very first songs I ever had on constant repeat. I remember one instance at school where my iPod was confiscated from me because I was listening to it during our homeroom hours as we (they, because I never actually spoke the words) recited the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn't have any time to be or interest in being patriotic—I was busy listening to Kelly Clarkson.

Discovering her third album, My December, was another turning point for me. Breakaway proved she had angst; My December proved she had staying power. Every song off that third album felt as though it had been crafted, bespoke, for me. I was so angry—I didn't really know why—I just felt worthless and alone, as if nobody cared about me, as if my existence meant nothing, and her music somehow made my days more bearable as I counted down to the end of high school, when I could finally escape my suburban prison and be free to be me. (I'm lying, obviously, because I did know why I was so angry—my parents were beyond negligent—but I could do nothing but acknowledge that fact; I couldn't change my material reality until I graduated.) Kelly's music spoke directly to the lightless void within me, and I became such a fan that I even followed her WordPress. I didn't have a parasocial relationship with her (because that sort of obsessiveness is weird to me), but I really, really liked her music. To this day, My December is still one of my favorite albums of all time.

In 2014, I took a job at Sony Music for a year. I worked in marketing, setting up releases for new music across all of Sony Music's roster…which included Kelly. This was right after she'd released her first Christmas album, Wrapped In Red, from which the department had plenty of marketing materials (including a Kelly Clarkson cardboard standee; see: Four’s cover image) for me to take home, and just before her next proper album, Piece By Piece. One of my close friends tipped me off that Kelly would be in the office on one of my off days; to compensate for missing out on the chance to meet my favorite singer, I handwrote a letter for my friend to pass to her, in which I explained that I'd been a fan since I was a child, that I loved My December above all of her other works, and that I wanted her to release more Mariah Carey-esque songs. (I take credit for Meaning Of Life's "Medicine," which bears a striking resemblance to Mariah's "Emotions"—thank you, Jackster!)

But, my relationship with her would soon change, perhaps most of all due to a couple of my ex-boyfriends. I'll get into that next week.