Kelly Clarkson Refused To Share Writing Credit With Dr. Luke, Gave Up “Millions” In Royalties

Kelly Clarkson revealed that she refused a writing credit and turned down a large sum of money in order to keep herself separate from producer Dr. Luke.

KELLY CLARKSON REFUSED CREDIT WITH DR. LUKE

In 2009, Clarkson worked with the controversial music producer on her track “My Life Would Suck Without You” when her label, Sony-owned RCA, forced her. “Basically, they were gonna sit on my record unless I did what they wanted. I was so frustrated because I literally said, ‘Anyone in the world but this one person. I will work with anyone you want to put in my path,'” the singer, 35, said in a recent interview with New York radio station Z100. “It was just this one thing, and I asked not to work with Dr. Luke just because I had not had a good experience with him.”

She recalled that, while the song was initially written by Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and Claude Kelly, that Clarkson herself made some changes, and so was eligible for a fourth writing credit on the track. She could have been entitled to “hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions” in royalties, but she refused. “I was like, ‘I don’t want my name near his. I want to pretend this didn’t happen in my life and I want to forget it,'” she concluded. “I was making a point to the people working with me going, this is how much I didn’t want to do this, I don’t care about the money… that’s not what holds weight in my life.”

Dr. Luke has been embroiled in a legal battle with Kesha, who claims he sexually assaulted her, and yet her record label would not allow her to void her contract with the producer, and would not make her album. She has been in musical limbo for years, unable to make music, because of Dr. Luke. Clarkson, however, says her issues with the man are different, but did not give specifics details to Z100.

During that legal debacle, Clarkson stood in solidarity with Kesha. “Trying 2 not say anything since I can’t say anything nice about a person… so this is me not talking about Dr. Luke,” she tweeted in Feb. 2016.