Kelly Clarkson Calls Out a Traitor With Heartbreaking Olivia Rodrigo Cover: Watch

October 12, 2022 E Jazz Reporter

“You didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor,” she sang.

Kelly Clarkson makes Sour songs sound so sweet. Performing on The Kelly Clarkson Show for her newest Kellyoke Wednesday (Oct. 12), the three-time Grammy winner belted a stunning cover of “Traitor,” one of the most heartbreaking songs on Olivia Rodrigo‘s debut album.

Glowing under appropriately melancholy blue stage lights, Clarkson sang the first chunk of the ballad with delicate vocals that floated gently over the accompaniment provided by her band Y’all, who added a scraping electric guitar part to give Rodrigo’s pop track a little bite. As the song crescendoed, though, so did the “Stronger” singer’s powerful voice.

“It took you two weeks, to go off and date her,” she sang, staring mournfully into the camera. “Guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor.”

The fourth single off of the 19-year-old “Deja Vu” singer’s blockbuster first record Sour, “Traitor” peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. All 11 of the tracks on Sour charted in the top 30 of the Hot 100, and two of them — “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U” — reached the coveted No. 1 spot.

Clarkson’s latest cover isn’t the first time she’s sung a Rodrigo track on Kellyoke. Last year, the talk-show host and Y’all teamed up for an extremely cathartic performance of “Drivers License.”

Watch Kelly Clarkson and her band Y’all perform a cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Traitor” above.

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