There isn’t a person I’ve encountered who doesn’t like Kelly Clarkson, at minimum. More often than not people adore her for her work on TV as a talk show host or The Voice judge, or her music, or her general goodness when it comes to body acceptance or speaking out about being blackmailed to work with Dr. Luke.
News of her divorce broke yesterday, surprising many because she’s been quarantining with her husband Brandon Blackstock and their children at their Montana ranch. I don’t know much (or anything) about living in a rustic ranch but I would imagine that if your marriage is on the brink, being quarantined with three children could certainly push things over the edge.
In talking about the ranch, Kelly said back in April that it’s their dream home and the ability to spend time together had been a “nice getaway”. That was in April, a few weeks into the world shutting down. As time went on, many of our homes were taken over by work (for her, filming her TV show) and homeschool obligations, which has been a grind. Celebrity and wealth help for sure, but time is time – there’s no way to substitute this time, or off-set it to someone else, or pay an assistant to do it. It has in many ways been an equalizer.
Gossip, even when it’s about someone we really like, is still a buffet. Is this a conscious uncoupling or a pandemic divorce? Either they were separated before they decided to quarantine and went together knowing the marriage was over or they went to the ranch married and are leaving it… not married. But there have been signs. Kelly and Brandon have two homes for sale in Nashville and Encino. Could it be related to this? Letting go of shared property could make finalizing a divorce easier. The date of separation has not been listed, so we don’t know. What we do know is that she’s asked for joint custody and that the prenup be enforced. That doesn’t sound so bad, right?
There’s more to this as Brandon is Kelly’s manager, so untying that knot is tricky, just as tricky as a marriage. (Brandon also manages Blake Shelton, Kelly’s The Voice co-star.) There are layers here which could lead to messy relationships or it could continue to be a co-parenting and work relationship. Just look at The Rock and his ex-wife Dany Garcia – they divorced and she helped make him a star.
From a privacy and public relations perspective, this is not a bad time to announce a divorce. There’s enough news right now, both world and local, to keep everyone glued to their screens but also distracted. Social media has waves of information daily and things are moving fast, so fast that a celebrity divorce (like Julianne Hough and Brooks Laich) come and go pretty quick. At the time of writing, Kelly wasn’t trending on Twitter and it had already been bumped off the top stories from TMZ and US Weekly. If it doesn’t get messy, and I hope it doesn’t, this could pass quickly and she will be able to go back to The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Voice with this in the rearview.
