Kelly Clarkson Says She Wouldn’t Have Made It Through Her Divorce Without Anti-Depressants: ‘I Need Help’

Kelly Clarkson revealed for the first time that she used anti-depressants to help her get through her divorce from Brandon Blackstock.

The Kelly Clarkson Show host, 41, recalled being unable to stop crying during an appointment with her therapist. “I looked at my therapist and I just couldn’t stop sobbing, and I was like, ‘I actually had to cancel some of the other day because I couldn’t stop crying. I cannot do this,’ ” Clarkson said in Wednesday’s episode of Las Culturistas, hosted by Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, a podcast from iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network. “And it was one of those things where I really had to put my pride aside and like all my childhood issues of whatever.”

“I was on Lexapro for like, I think two months,” Clarkson told Rogers, 33, and Yang, 32. “My thing was, I just can’t smile anymore for America right now. I’m not happy and I need help … and it was honest to God, the greatest decision ever. I wouldn’t have made it [without it].”

Clarkson and Blackstock, 46, married in 2013. The “Breakaway” singer filed for divorce in 2020, and the divorce was finalized in March 2022. The two share daughter River Rose, 9, and son Remington “Remy” Alexander, 7. Their relationship is the main inspiration for her new album, Chemistry.

During another recent podcast appearance, Clarkson said her children are only interested in her music so they can sing curse words.

“[I] don’t really listen to my stuff around [my kids],” Clarkson told Audacy Check-In podcast host Mike Adam. “So even my other stuff, I guess they were listening to my music with somebody else because my daughter asked to hear ‘Whole Lotta Woman’ and I was like, ‘How do you know that song?’ ”

“But she wanted to say ‘a–‘ really. She was like, ‘Can I sing ‘a–?’ And I was like, ‘Only with me.’ I was like, ‘You can’t do this anywhere else,’ ” Clarkson added. “So anyway they don’t really, we don’t jam to me, we listen to a lot of Harry Styles and Aurora.”

Before Chemistry was released on Friday, Clarkson stopped by TODAY where she revealed the “little text exchange” she had with Blackstock about the album.

“I don’t even remember why or how it happened, but I was like, ‘Hey, I didn’t just diminish us down to one [thing],’ ” she explained. “You know what I’m saying? It’s all in there, the ride. The beauty is in there, as well. Now there’s a lot of pain, but that’s what happens for all of us.”

“It’s very personal. And I’ve always released personal music — I think I’m that kind of writer in general, everybody knows that,” she later explained about her new music. “I think when you have kids — you both have kids, too — you kind of debate, ‘What am I going to do here?’ So I was very selective about the songs I picked for the album.”

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