A moment like this — needs to be remembered a dozen years later! Kelly Clarkson recalled her 2002 American Idol win for a very special #TBT posted to her Twitter on Thursday, Sept. 4.
“12 years ago today I won the first season of American Idol,” Clarkson, 32, wrote. “Thank you to all the fans that got me here 🙂 #tbt.”
In 2002, Clarkson, a 20-year-old cocktail waitress from Burleson, Texas, won the inaugural season of the reality competition series opposite runner-up Justin Guarini. The singer went on to release her smash debut single, “A Moment Like This,” which became a number one hit.
Twelve years later, Clarkson, one of the most commercially and critically successful Idol winners ever, still has a thriving music career thanks to her start on show. She’s also spoken positively about other Idol contestants, including fellow winner and Southern superstar Carrie Underwood.
“She would be good,” Clarkson told Us of Underwood as a possible Idol judge. “She can have that face . . . that bluff face! She can put that on!”
Contestants these days, according to a Fox exec, are lacking that star quality and edge that both Clarkson and season 4 Idol winner Underwood possessed during the show’s successful years.
At the Television Critics Association event in July, Fox Networks chairman and CEO Peter Rice told reporters: “I do think if I have a criticism of the show for us last year, it’s that we haven’t found a group of kids that have captured the imagination of the public. They’ve been really talented kids. But for whatever reason, there hasn’t been that sort of catalyst behind the show.”
