'Miss Independent' shows what Clarkson means with defiantly personal work

When Kelly Clarkson sang "Miss Independent" on her debut album, the title seemed ironic. Today, not so much.

Four years ago, Clarkson was backed by a squadron of pop-music veterans on "Thankful," and again on its even more successful follow-up, the quintuple-platinum "Breakaway." These pros provided a ready template to which the first "American Idol" champion added her natural exuberance, likability and talent.

Flash forward to earlier this year, when the 25-year-old singer decided to break away from her dependency. The defiantly personal nature of her new album, "My December" -- now is the winter of her discontent -- would lead Clarkson to feud with her record label, fire her manager and cancel a planned arena tour.

The fallout from this quarter-life crisis is evident in her current, far more modest concert swing. Monday night, the woman who once nearly packed White River Amphitheatre struggled to fill the 2,807 seats at the Paramount.

Undaunted, Clarkson pulled out all the stops in a 75-minute performance. She was rewarded with a response whose decibel level might have matched that at the Seahawks game across town.

Her big voice dominated songs as varied as the soulful "Hole," which evoked fellow Texan Janis Joplin -- no, Clarkson's not in the same league -- the operatic power ballad "Addicted" and "Never Again," a scorned-woman rocker the singer termed "probably the most bitter song I've ever written."

Her "boy bashing" culminated in amusing fashion during the encore, as Clarkson followed "Sober" with "Chivas." (She resisted the temptation to call it "Miss Chivas.") Written "on bar napkins," "Chivas" relates her reaction to meeting an ex in a club, which led to a Lindsay Lohan Moment with much whiskey drinking -- "I'm not promoting this to underage people," she cautioned the teen-leaning crowd, "but I'm 25" -- and her singing "Sweet Child o' Mine." (Naturally, it's on YouTube.)

Clarkson showed more restraint on a moving version of Patty Griffin's "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" and on her own "Because of You," accompanied only by piano and by the audience, filling in for duet partner Reba McEntire.