Kelly Clarkson Reveals the One Song She Won’t Cover

Along with her own hits, Kelly Clarkson has become known for her perennially flawless covers of other artists’ songs, a talent she shows off daily on The Kelly Clarkson Show during her “Kellyoke” segment. Clarkson has covered songs by artists ranging from The Clash to Drake to Blake Shelton, but the American Idol winner just revealed which song she’ll never try her hand at.

During Monday’s episode of The Voice, Clarkson was working with her team’s advisor, Luis Fonsi, when she told him that she is “afraid” to cover his 2017 hit “Despacito.” “I just realized something: you have the one song in history that I’m afraid to cover,” she told him. Fonsi replied, “It is a lot of lyrics!” Clarkson added, “I have practiced so hard, because I love singing in Spanish and different languages, and it is like the biggest song of all time, but you’re like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna leave that alone!’”

“Despacito,” which Fonsi recorded with Daddy Yankee and was later remixed to add Justin Bieber, became a massive hit, topping the charts in 47 countries and becoming the most-viewed video of all time on YouTube until 2020, when it was dethroned by “Baby Shark Dance.”

Clarkson credits her musical director, Jason Halbert, for the idea for “Kellyoke,” and Halbert told Vulture that the segment stemmed from the singer’s stint on American Idol as well as her love of performing covers on tour.

“I think because of how she started on Idol, covering so many great songs on the show, when I first started with her, I used to get tons of emails from fans requesting that she cover certain songs,” he said. “So I brought her the idea of, ‘Why don’t we do a fan request every day?’ She loved the idea, and I think we’ve been doing it since almost the very beginning. Whenever they were coming up with a concept for the show, that sort of morphed into ‘Kellyoke.’”

“Emotion and authenticity and sincerity always win over fancy music, you know,” he added. “My goal is either to enhance her vocal or stay out of the way of it. And I’ve learned a lot of that from her. It’s great to see so much more of America getting to see what I’ve been seeing her do all this time.”