You can now add writer-producer Toby Gad to the list of collaborators working on Kelly Clarkson’s upcoming fifth studio album, after the pair were both snapped smiling together after a recent session.

“I didn’t know a voice could sound as good as Kelly’s,” Gad Tweeted along with the picture. ”What an amazing singer, and sweetheart.”

Never truer words spoken.

This isn’t the first time that Gad has hit the studio with an Idol contestant, previously crafting some of the best tracks from Jordin Sparks’s sophomore album Battlefield, as well as songs for both Kris Allen and Alison Iraheta.

He’s also worked with Brandy (“Human”), The Veronica’s (“Untouched”), Alicia Keys (“Love is My Disease”). and even helmed Fergie’s monster smash “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and BC Jean/Beyonce’s “If I Were a Boy”.

Kelly officially started actually recording her new album last month; a single is tentatively due around September, followed by the album before the end of the year.

I’m so excited for new Kelly music. Considering that she had a dual number one album and single last year with All I Ever Wanted and “My Life Would Suck Without You”, the chance of her topping the charts again definitely can’t be ruled out.

Last month Kelly Clarkson was in Washington D.C. to film a performance for the America Celebrates July 4th TV special, which just aired today.

In front of President Obama and the First Lady, Kelly performed a sassy, soulful rendition of Nikka Costa’s hit “Everybody Got Their Something”. The R&B/Soul Kelly has been missing in action since the Idol days and her first album era, so it’s nice to see that she’s still got it in her.

As usual, most people will probably focus on Kelly’s hair, her weight, her outfit and God knows what else, but the performance was a total knockout and I hope that other things don’t overshadow her vocal talent.

Peep the performance below.

Kelly Clarkson sent out an interesting tweet regarding her fifth album yesterday, announcing that she has only just recorded the first song for the record, also revealing that it was a duet with someone.

Officially recorded the first song for my 5th album today! It’s so awesome and is a duet but I can’t tell you who quite yet

That’s all well and good, but what does it mean for all the demos that have been leaking? Were all those songs just demos for other artists? Was it just Kelly playing around in the studio? Or perhaps she has recording a bunch of material, has now chosen what will make her album, and is now re-recording it all properly.

As for the duet, I have my fingers crossed for either Daughtry or Miranda Lambert. Who do you want to see Kelly do a song with?

Kelly Clarkson has proved yet again that she’s still the most down to earth pop star in the industry today, with the leak of several new video’s that show the singer engaged in a crazy karaoke session with her friends at a local bar in Nashville.

When she arrived to the bar “Larry’s Lounge”, Kelly sent out a tweet inviting all her fans over the age of 21 to come and party with her and sing some tunes. The place soon became packed with Kelly stans, who all had their camera phones in tow and managed to record several video’s of Kelly rocking out with her friends to some hilarious hits.

Check below to see a raucous Kelly Clarkson singing Ke$ha’s “Your Love is My Drug”, Guns ‘n’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and the Vanilla Ice trash classic “Ice Ice Baby”.

Thanks to Kelly’s craziest and most insane stan Anne Chantal for uploading these. Check out the rest below the cut.

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If the recent batch of auto-tuned leaks from Kelly Clarkson had you raising your eyebrows and wondering where the pop-rock princess has vanished to, then you better brace yourself because she’e just hit us with the grand daddy of them all with her latest leak “Ready to Go”.

Recently named by Esquire as ‘the best voice in the history of pop music’, Clarkson’s vocals are noticeably absent on “Ready to Go”, instead being replaced by a robotic, computerized and indecipherable auto-tune that makes Ke$ha’s recorded vocals sound like Celine Dion by comparison.

I tried to pick apart the lyrics (and had great trouble doing so), but I managed to make out something about Kelly picking up a guy at a club and then inviting his girlfriend to join in on the fun.

I know you gotcha girl but think she’s d-d-diggin’ me / So if you’re not too scared to share it twice p-p-play with me / I’m not the type to leave you dancing alone / I like her style she’s more than welcome to come / I know you’re willin’ so don’t act like ya won’t / I see it in ya eyes and she’s all ready to go.

Really Kelly?

I know you have a broad and very unbiased taste in music, but please forgive me if I’m finding your new direction a little surprising. The song is kind of good though, in a Britney sort of way!

I think I’ll reserve my judgment until the album drops at the end of the year. The first single is currently slated for September, so we should know what’s going on with the direction of the record by then.

Kelly Clarkson is re-teaming with her “My Life Would Suck Without You” collaborator Claude Kelly for her new album, with Claude spilling the beans to MTV during a recent red carpet interview.

“I’m … really, really excited to go back in for Kelly Clarkson,” he told MTV News. ”Well, I wrote ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’ for the last album, so we’re trying to take it up a level,” said Claude, who recently worked with Christina Aguilera for her Bionic album. “She’s toured the world with that album [All I Ever Wanted]. She’s experienced stuff, so whatever she’s going through right now: fun, good, the bad, the ugly — we want to put on that record.”

Some of Clarkson’s newer songs have already leaked to the Internet. But Kelly isn’t letting that influence what he does with the singer. “I haven’t heard the songs, but I heard there’s been leaks,” he said. “Kelly Clarkson is kind of a force of her own. Her voice and her mood determine what she does. So I just want to do what’s on her heart ’cause that’s how you get the best songs out of an artist like that, is for them to sing what they really mean.”

People give the All I Ever Wanted record a really hard time and I think it’s a little unfair. I absolutely despised it for about a year because I couldn’t accept the fact that Kelly was doing more top forty style stuff again after the brilliant and dark My December, but if you give it a chance it’s actually a really great pop album.

Anyways, last week Kelly performed a cover of Tracey Chapmans “Fast Car” with fellow Idol star Daughtry. I didn’t post it earlier because the quality was bad, but the good folk at ONTD have dug up a really good version so check it out below.

I’ve seen both Daughtry and Kelly live before, and they were both amazing, so this duet is pretty incredible.

Pop fans were shocked this week when singer-songwriter Ryan Tedder told the Denver Post that he was working with Kelly Clarkson again for her next album, despite the feud that the pair had which was recently revisited when a song by Kelly “Wash, Rinse, Repeat” leaked online, dissing both Tedder and her record label in the lyrics.

Well it looks like there could be more to story, when today a fan asked Kelly whether or not it was true that she was working with Tedder again.

Kelly’s response? A simple “No”.

To make matters worse it also looks like Tedder’s claims that he is working with Britney Spears could also be false. When the news broke of the high-profile collaboration, Britney’s manager, Adam Leber, was quick to cryptically tweet: “Million producers claiming to be working “WITH” Brit on her next album. 99% of those claims are false….”.

Has there been a serious case of miscommunication, have the Denver Post displayed some unethical journalism practices by misquoting Tedder, or is the notoriously egotistical producer just tooting his own horn a little too much?

In some less scandalous news, Ryan’s band OneRepublic have a new music video out for their single “Secrets”. If you remember correctly, the band’s last single “All The Right Moves” literally took about 6 months to become a bonafide hit on the charts, so “Secrets” could follow that pattern and end up as another slow burner.

Check out the video below the cut.

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The American Idol finale may have been all about the diva’s Christina Aguilera and Janet Jackson, but the night was also home to several other fantastic performances.

All the previous winners of American Idol (Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia, Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks, Taylor Nobody Cares and Kris Allen) joined forces to perform “Together We Are One” as a tribute to Simon Cowell, who is leaving the show and heading over to rival series The X Factor.

It was a great performance, but Kelly and Carrie clearly slayed their classmates. They outsung everybody else on the stage and showed that they really are two of the best female vocalists in the industry today.

Also performing was runner-up Crystal Bowersox, who was joined by one of her idols Alanis Morrissette to duet on “Ironic” and “You Oughta Know”. Crystal should’ve won the show, but it’s better that she didn’t because now she won’t be locked into one of those shifty contracts like Kelly Clarkson is.

Last up is Kris Allen, who thanks to the shining star that is Adam Lambert, is often overlooked as a talented artist in his own right. Kris gave a vocally perfect performance of his new single “The Truth”, which actually sounded pretty close to the actual CD version.

I really hope it’s a hit for him.

Check out all the talented singers below.

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In the biggest “WTF” moment since Britney shaved her head and Beyonce somehow won all those Grammy’s, the usually egotistica Ryan Tedder has announced that he’s working with Kelly Clarkson on her fifth album.

By now I’m sure you already know about Kelly and Ryan’s heated feud over Kelly’s claims that Ryan recycled beats by making her song “Already Gone” too similar to Beyonce’s “Halo”, so I won’t go over all the details again.

The feud died down briefly, but was then reignited when a new Kelly song titled “Wash, Rinse, Repeat” hit the web, in which she lashed out at her label and Tedder for trying to make her sound like everybody else. Well Tedder has heard it, and instead of getting pissed off, it turns out that he actually respects the singer for her honesty.

“I’m pretty sure that song was ‘somewhat’ about me … and her record label,” Tedder told The Denver Post. “But I actually like it — I think Kelly speaks her mind regardless of anything. She’s great with lyrics, and I love that she is her own person. She’s no puppet.”

“I’m working on stuff for her next album and am personally over any of the drama between the two of us,” Tedder said. “It’s silly. ‘Already Gone’ is now a bigger hit than ‘Halo’ was, so I think she’s probably happy, too.”

Eh, I don’t know what chart Ryan is looking at but “Already Gone” was not a bigger hit than “Halo”. Many people think it’s a better song though, and Ryan has previously gone on record to say that he likes it much more than “Halo”.

Ryan and Kelly working together is pretty bizarre and could be a ploy from RCA records to get publicity, but Kelly did reveal at the end of March that she was getting along much better with her label and they were finally agreeing on a few things.

Kelly’s new single is tentatively due in September, with the album scheduled to hit stores in time for the Xmas sales rush.

Kelly Clarkson already played with dance-pop on her scathing Ryan Tedder diss record “Wash, Rinse, Repeat”, but now she’s getting even deeper into the genre in a freshly leaked demo “Dance”, rumored to be from her upcoming fifth album.

The song fits along the lines of the uptempo “If I Can’t Have You” from Kelly’s All I Ever Wanted record, but coming from her it all sounds a little shallow and out of place, being much better suited to an artist like Miley Cyrus or Rihanna.

I don’t know about you but I prefer my serves of Kelly Clarkson to be a little gutsier and emotional, such as “Never Again” or “Because of You”.

After a controversial new Kelly Clarkson song “Wash, Rinse, Repeat” leaked online dissing her record label and producer Ryan Tedder, a lot of questions were raised about the singers widely publicized and tumultuous relationship with RCA Records.

Well it turns out that Kelly actually addressed the drama surrounding her record label during an interview in New Zealand at the very end of March, simply stating that things are a lot better and all she wants is to work with people who respect her.

“I actually am getting along quite well [with the label]. I don’t want to jinx it but we’re doing very well for this next record and we’ve been agreeing on a lot of stuff that we normally don’t. I’m working with a lot of new people as well at the label, so it’s actually going well.”

“It’s one of those things and ya’ll understand that you’re in a job where there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen. It’s one of those things where I’m more of a people person, and I know that obviously it’s a business and you’re not always gonna agree but I just wanna be working with people that I respect and people that respect me. That’s really the only key thing for me”.

I think it’s safe to say that she won’t work with Ryan Tedder again then.

Kelly’s new album is due by the end of the year, but if material from the recording sessions continues to leak then it could cause huge problems for the albums impending release.

Her latest single “All I Ever Wanted” is currently sitting at #96 on the Hot 100 and #13 on the Adult Pop Songs chart.

Earlier today I did a post about how new music from Kelly Clarkson was being hacked and leaked online. I included a tagged snippet of a new track called “Wash, Rinse, Repeat”, but now it’s leaked in full and after listening to the song properly it’s revealed itself to be a scathing diss towards the music industry.

In the new track Kelly targets her record label as well as producer Ryan Tedder, who she got into a public feud with last year after she accused him of giving her and Beyonce the same beat for their songs “Already Gone” and “Halo”.

I’ve taken my best shot at translating the auto-tuned lyrics below (thanks to Blink Blind).

I can’t take the pressure of new / Give me old, flip it off let’s see if it sticks to the wall again… / Give it to them, they will never notice, so what’s stopping us? / Does it sound familiar, does it linger in your ear like something you remember from just last year…?

I’ll be playin’ God and you can be my b***h / The only compromise is you get to pick which of these formula’s is your perfect fit / Wash, rinse, repeat, why are you fighting it? / No, no no, don’t get crazy keep between those lines / Here’s what we have in mind, we’ve worked with everyone trust us and see / Wash, rinse and repeat.

Hi my name is blah and I’m here to run everything / Spreading like a cancer I will die and take you all with me / Let you have a little bit while secretly I’m waiting to rip that rug from underneath / Can’t believe you fell for it / Music from the past, from the present, well just last week / We will change a note and get away with it (wait and see) / Just when you think we’ve changed like an addict we sweep back in with a dose of reality.

Kelly then imitates her target by repeating several lines in a hilarious robotic voice:

“Wash, rinse and repeat, wash, rinse and repeat… The definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. I’m insane. Just wash, rinse and repeat. You love this song. This song is the most amazing song you’ve ever heard. This song is completely different from that other song that sounds exactly the same.”

You’ve gotta love Kelly. While other pop stars are happy to be micro-managed and controlled, or are just too scared to speak out, Kelly just comes right out and tells it how it is.

It all started during the Breakaway era when Kelly admitted that she was contractually forced to film the Idol cash in flick From Just to Kelly after Amerian Idol wrapped up. She then gained a reputation for being outspoken during the public battle against her record label surrounding her My December album, and then things snowballed after she made several comments about the music industry and her label during interviews and live concerts.

And of course there was the drama between herself and Ryan Tedder, which she clearly seems to be addressing in this new track.

I predict a lot more drama in Kelly’s future until she’s fulfilled her record contract and gets the creative freedom that she so obviously craves. What do you think?