Music Review: Kelly Clarkson 'I Dare You'

Sincerity in pop music is tricky. In the wrong hands, sincerity becomes saccharine, cloying or manipulative. It takes a well established and beloved artist to offer something heartfelt and intended for uplift. Kelly Clarkson, in my opinion, is one of the few modern pop stars capable of pulling off sincere. Kelly has cultivated a persona that is genuine, trusted, occasionally divisive but always appearing authentic.

Kelly Clarkson’s new single is among the most lyrically sincere tunes to come along in some time. I Dare You is impacting radio and streaming services this week. The lyric video alone was viewed by more than 300,000 people in just a day after debuting on YouTube. Okay, compared to a lot of other pop stars, that’s a bit low, but for a song so sincere it could underscore videos of people rescuing animals from the pound, that’s a good number.

My apologies, I want to limit the snark in this review. If Kelly is going to be this raw and wholehearted, I should attempt the same in this review. The song is called I Dare You and it appears to be inspired by our current cultural moment. It’s a call to action song in which Kelly Clarkson calls on the listeners to take a chance and love. The dare at the center of the song is a dare to put your heart on the line and love other people.

Here’s the odd thing about this song, for me. The more time I spend with it, the better it gets. In fact, the more time I spin the song on YouTube, the more I am having a genuine, emotional response to it. When I began the review, less than 300 words ago, and a good half hour since I put fingers to keyboard, I was thinking how I would keep my emotions out of it and critique this song like any other I have reviewed.

That’s turned out to be a fool's errand. After about the 6th time I listened to I Dare You, I found myself completely won over by Kelly’s simple, sincere message. Lo and behold, I am even finding layers in the song that I felt were lacking when I conceived this review after a cursory listen to the song. There is something more to I Dare You than just a sincere plea to love one another.

Any pop star can ply an audience with platitudes about how we should all love each other. Kumbaya and all of that nonsense. That’s kind of the bias I brought into I Dare You. On a glancing listen, I thought this was just another privileged pop star with a simple, safe and commercial message: Love each other. I was wrong… listen a little closer and the heart of I Dare You isn’t merely love each other, it’s about compassion and the reality of this moment, the pandemic.

“We're all full of hope, tryna stay afloat, tryna save one another

People let you drown 'cause they don't know how to stay above water

When they're too broken to know what they've put you through

Do the only thing that you'd want done to you”

I could be placing this into unintended context but a lyric like ‘tryna save one another’ takes on a whole new meaning today than it did a year ago. Today, many of us are legitimately trying to save one another. For those with family members battling the Coronavirus, this lyric hits right at the heart of our cultural moment. It’s a simple line that could be a throw away just months ago but it carries a powerful message now.

From there the chorus underlines other aspects of that portion of lyrics by calling out those who are only seeing the worst in others. Those who are so caught up in their own pain that they are letting others die or willingly endangering others out of their own selfishness.

“Oh, even if you're hurt and you can only see the worst (Only see the worst)

Even if you think it's not enough

Oh, I, I dare you”

It’s simple, but it is also quite beautiful. To those who are in a negative space these days, Kelly dares you to show love for others and see what happens. Some will view that as simplistic, some will dismiss it as naive or pandering. This message connected with me even as I was rather cynically prepared to write this song off as pablum. The compassion isn’t given freely, it comes with the recognition that much of the negativity, the hatred, that people put into the world comes from a place of pain and hurt.

That pain and hurt is no excuse to harm others but it is something that we can all understand and relate to. Perhaps simply asking those people, or daring those people to, show love for others is just what they need. That’s a pretty big revelation for a modest pop song. But if you think my review and this song are naive or insincere in their own right, I dare you to watch Kelly’s multi-cultural, multi-lingual performance video.

Watching Kelly stare straight down the camera and sing these lyrics in multiple different languages isn’t merely a stunt. Her eyes are pleading and the sincerity is gripping. Her genuine emotion and that of the world music stars who join her were a revelation for me. I found that I could not resist the song after staring Kelly Clarkson in the eyes and seeing the power of her performance. I suspect anyone will feel what I felt in that moment.