Since U Been Gone

 Today's topic is all about celebrating 20 years of Kelly Clarkson's 'Since U Been Gone' song. 

Note: I used 'U' instead of 'You' because Kelly Clarkson and her team thought it was cool, it's still cool to this day.

'Since U Been Gone' was written and produced by the infamous Max Martin - which just recently announced on Billboard that he was #1 of the top songwriters of the 21st century - and Lukasz Gottwald aka Dr. Luke. While he was number 2 of the Billboard's songwriters of the 21st century, just behind Max Martin.

The song itself has a power ballad inspired sounds (much like the growing trend from the 2000s where rock was quintessential; think Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne and Matchbox Twenty) a pop rock, power pop sound that had a moderate tempo of 132 beats per minute in key of G Major. 

Some songs to compare to that have the similar beats are The Proclaimers 'I'm Gonna Be 5000 Miles', The B-52s 'Love Shack' and Nelly Furtado 'Maneater'. 

FYI - I'll make a future blog post but here is the website provided from the University of Waterloo talking about the beats per minute - you can check it out below.

https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~dtompkin/music/bpm/index.html

Some familiar 'G Major' songs include Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off', Neil Young 'Rockin' In The Free World' and Radiohead 'Creep'.

How this song came into fruition was they had intentions to give this song to Pink but she turned it down. They came to Hilary Duff's managers and showed them this song, originally they decided to keep it and record, but after recording it, Duff could not hit the high notes.

Clive Davis - who is 93 years old in part of writing this - is a record producer and during the time, he wanted to give it to a fresh, younger singer who won American Idol and off from her first album, 'Thankful', Kelly Clarkson. He said, "Max was looking to move on from what he had done with Backstreet Boys, and I really spent time convincing them that an 'American Idol' winner could bring all the feeling and passion that was required to the song."

In her Watch What Happens Live back in 2023, Clarkson had been surprised that those two had already written it down and it made her look like a fool, and her label said something different, leading to her unhappiness of the miscommunication, and she had a bad vibe to this song.

From MTV, she just finished recordings for her second album, 'Breakaway', when artists and repertoire (aka A&R) had advised her to come to Sweden to see Dr. Luke and Max Martin and have a meeting. Luke said via Billboard this:

"That was a conscious move by Max and myself, because we were listening to alternative and indie music and talking about some song – I don't remember what it was. I said, "Ah, I love this song,' and Max was like, 'If they would just write a damn pop chorus on it!' It was driving him nuts, because that indie song was sort of on six, going to seven, going to eight, the chorus comes ... and it goes back down to five. It drove him crazy. And when he said that, it was like, light bulb. 'Why don't we do that, but put a big chorus on it?" It worked."

At the end of the recordings, this would be the last song recorded for her sophomore album, 'Breakaway' and officially the lead single in 2004.

When it hits the radio airwaves, music critics were positive. One of the examples was Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine has compared this song to the works of Pat Benetar and 'successfully dodged the sophomore slump'. 

'Sophomore Slump' in terms of music means that after the first year of releasing an album, or a body work material, the second album was not looking merely successful, or failed to capture the fans attention. But in what Cinquemani stated, 'it means that fans are taking note, and this song established her success.

It was a success indeed, as charts from around the world reached massive success. In the US Billboard Hot 100, it started at number 70 and climbed up gradually, until it reached number two, right behind 50 Cent's 'Candy Shop'. It stayed on the charts for 20 weeks.

The music video for this song was directed by Alex De Rakoff in early November 2004. In the video, she trashed the ex-boyfriends house after a cheating. She said this, during an interview, she said, 

"You know, 'Why don't I just go trash her house? [...] And so I do it in the video. All I do is break stuff. It's a cool job. I could get used to this."

Since then, it was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for over one million copies sold. It was the fourth-best selling song in 2005 in the US.

It also appeared in many lists, including #26 of 'The Top 100 Tracks of the 2000s' by Beats per minute in 2010, Rolling Stone magazine, as part of their list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time'; #482 in 2010; and #93 in 2021.

Also, this song has been covered multiple times. 

This song has cemented as one of the most liked songs of the 2000s, thanks to the innovation of producer and songwriter Max Martin and Dr. Luke as well as the singer, Kelly Clarkson.

Update! I just heard that 'Since U Been Home's has hit 1 Billion Streams on Spotify!