When Kesha lost her most recent legal battle against Dr. Luke, a number of stars offered their support to the pop singer, including one of Luke’s most famous collaborators. Kelly Clarkson, whose “Since You Been Gone†jump-started both their careers, first shaded the producing giant with a damning tweet. Now she’s clarifying what she meant, in an interview with Australia’s KIIS 1065, calling Luke “not a good person†and a liar. She claims her record label (whose parent company is Sony) “blackmailed†her into working with Dr. Luke both in 2004 and, most recently, on 2009’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,†by threatening to withhold her albums. “They were like, ‘We will not put your album out if you don’t do this.’ It was a really hard time for me. And you know, we have a whole crew to support and people that depend on us for their livelihood, so sometimes you just have to make those decisions and swallow that pill.â€
Clarkson says despite how much Kesha’s fans have asked her to, she can’t speak to Kesha’s specific situation because she “wasn’t there for any of that†and that Luke “never did anything like that to me.†But she also notes that she hasn’t worked with Luke in six years for “good solid reasonsâ€: “He’s just not a good person to me. We’ve clashed. He’s just not a good guy to me. Obviously he’s a talented dude, but he’s just lied a lot. I’ve run into a couple really bad situations where, musically, it’s been really hard for me because he will just lie to people. And then it makes the artist look bad. And he’s kind of difficult to work with, kind of demeaning.â€
She also says she’s heard a number of accounts from other women in the music industry with stories similar to Kesha’s, though not specifically about Dr. Luke. Her comments about Luke begin at 1:23:40 below.