Kelly Clarkson has gone on the record to support Kesha and call producer Dr. Luke “not a good person,” and added that she only worked with him in the past because she was “blackmailed” by her label.
“I only worked with him because I got blackmailed by my label,” she said on Australia’s “Kyle and Jackie O” radio show on Monday. “They were like, ‘we will not put your album out if you don’t do this.’”
Clarkson, the very first “American Idol” winner, is on RCA Records’ roster. The company is owned by Sony, which is named in Kesha’s lawsuit against Dr. Luke, who she claims abused her both sexually and emotionally. The suit claimed that Sony turned a blind eye to Dr. Luke’s behavior, and sought an injunction to allow Kesha to produce further albums with greater creative freedom — and without Dr. Luke.
“He’s not a good person to me,” Clarkson said. “We’ve clashed and I can’t say anything other than that … I wasn’t there, I don’t know specifically what happened in their situation. Obviously I wasn’t in the room. I can remark on his character and that’s… unfortunately when you have that poor of character that so many artists don’t like you and don’t like working with you, that’s not normal … He’s a really.. he’s just not a good guy.”
When asked what exactly makes him a bad guy, Clarkson, who worked on recordings like “Since U Been Gone,” “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and “My Life Would Suck Without You,” with Dr. Luke, responded that, “he’s lied a lot.”
“He will just lie to people and make the artist look bad, and he’s difficult to work with and demeaning and that’s kind of unfortunate.”
Kesha filed suit against Dr. Luke in October 2014, accusing him of continuous sexual harassment and assault since she first signed a contract with him in 2005, shortly after her 18th birthday. Luke filed a countersuit against Kesha, accusing her of trying to defame him to get out of her contract.
However, Clarkson insisted that Dr. Luke never acted with her the way he allegedly did with Kesha: “He had never done anything like that with me.”