Kelly Clarkson on the importance of Chevel Shepherd's country 'Voice' victory: 'Little girls need people to look up to'
Tuesday night on The Voice, 16-year-old Chevel Shepherd made history as the first country contestant not on Blake Shelton’s team to win the show. Speaking to reporters after the Season 15 finale, Shepherd’s delighted coach, Kelly Clarkson — who said she was “still hyperventilating” over the result — didn’t see this as just a victory for Team Kelly but for women in country music at a time when, sadly, hardly any female artists are making inroads in Nashville.
“We have, like, two [women] on the [country] charts,” Clarkson grumbled. But she also noted, much more optimistically, that Chevel’s “record is still No. 1! Her original song — not a cover, y’all. Her original song [“Broken Hearts”] is still No. 1 on iTunes! That says something.”
When Shepherd auditioned for The Voice, Clarkson compared her to Dolly Parton. And later, when Shepherd covered Loretta Lynn’s “You’re Lookin’ at Country,” Lynn herself gave Shepherd a shout-out on social media — which lent the New Mexico singer, who started performing publicly at age 8 and is also an expert yodeler, instant country credibility.
“There’s a lot of people that can sing country music, but not a lot of people that are country music,” Clarkson explained. “Like, they’re almost born coming out of the womb sounding like Loretta Lynn. It’s like, crazy. Honestly, as a country music fan from childhood … there is an element to [Chevel] that I do dearly miss about country music.”
“I’ve been listening to country music since I was tiny, tiny — well, I’m still tiny, but tinier!” joked Shepherd, who’s only 4 foot 10. “I just love the stories behind it and how you can put yourself in the lyrics. Even if you haven’t had your heart broken, you can really just tell the story of the song to people, and people really listen to that and just relate to that.”
“Reba, Trisha, Faith. Martina, Patty, the Judds, Wynonna — all these women changed my life as a singer,” Clarkson continued. “And I think that’s why I got so teary-eyed watching [Chevel perform]. It’s like, we need that! Little girls need people, in every genre of music, to look up to and admire and aspire to be! I’m going to cry again!”
Clarkson joked that she’s even more of a “momager” with Shepherd than she was with Brynn Cartelli, her 15-year-old champion from last season. Still, she has been very hands-on with Cartelli — who is now managed by Clarkson’s husband, Brandon Blackstock. She signed with the same label as Clarkson, Atlantic Records, and performed her new single, “Last Night’s Mascara,” on Tuesday’s Voice finale — and it seems like Clarkson wants to be similarly involved with Shepherd’s career.
“It’s really cool watching Brynn just follow her dreams, knowing that Kelly stuck behind her this whole way through,” marveled Shepherd.
Clarkson’s protectiveness stems from the fact that she was a former reality show contestant herself on the first season of American Idol, and she knows how challenging it can be. “It’s a hard industry. I warned Brynn’s mom, and I went to [Chevel’s] mom, and I’m like, ‘Hold onto them! Hug them! Tell them really nice things, because people are [mean]. That’s horrible, but that’s a reality,” Clarkson said.
“I didn’t have anyone [when I was younger]; like, I moved out to L.A. alone, and I didn’t have anybody, any friends in the industry. … I know everybody’s down with talent shows on TV now, but they weren’t in the beginning, so it was very hard,” Clarkson elaborated. “So I think that’s why [with Chevel] I’m so overly, like, ‘Are you good? Are you happy?’ I just want to make sure, because I wish somebody would have been that for me. … At the end of the day, I think, we forget that we’re all humans and we’re not robots, and we have feelings and we’re tired and we’re excited, and all those things should count and should be validated. I just want to be that for [Chevel]. I just want to be a big sister.”
Clarkson has famously struggled for artistic control throughout her career, long after leaving Idol. “Literally somebody told me one time, ‘You’re a sinking ship.’ They said that to me, and they were rude, obviously,” Clarkson revealed. “But I literally said to them back — and I mean this, and I want [Chevel] and everybody to have this mentality — ‘OK, cool. But if it’s going to go down, I want to be at the helm.” So as Shepherd embarks on her own career, it seems Clarkson will be there to help her young protégé remain true to her own authentic, vintage style.
“I want to hook [Chevel] up,” Clarkson declared. “I want to make sure that [her debut album] is exactly her sound. I know she loves Loretta and Dolly and she loves that old school, and there’s totally a way we can make her sound work nowadays. And I want to thank Chris Stapleton, Kacey Musgraves, all the people bringing back that old vibe of country music, for enabling us to do that. I want to make sure she makes the record she wants to make. You want to make sure your style is you, and I understand that more than anyone. I had to fight really hard after I won [American Idol] to make sure it was me, so I’m going to do that for [Chevel]. I want to make it amazing.”
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