Throwback Thursday: Kelly Clarkson, ‘Catch My Breath’

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly series showcasing an album, single, music video or performance of a bygone era and its personal and/or cultural significance.

When I turned 30, something clicked inside my head, and things began to make more sense in my life, personally and professionally. That’s not to say I still don’t wrestle with my anxiety on a near-daily basis, sometimes trapped in a frightening loop de loop ⏤ but entering a new decade signaled a colossal threshold crossing. I was leaving my footprints in unlikely places, and people were talking. Sure, the journalism arena was and still is on fire, but I was finding myself in ways I had never imagined. I haven’t been able to catch my breath, quite literally, until now. Enter Kelly Clarkson‘s wondrous 2012 hit “Catch My Breath,” the anchoring single to her first greatest hits compilation. It touches upon many of the Clarkson-isms we had come to expect, but it came with an overwhelming sense of both urgency and relief.

Clarkson was finally able to find strength from within herself, and she wasn’t about to go down without a fight. As far as modern-day trailblazers go, she’s in front of the pack. Like a wolverine on the hunt.

2019 is a chance of redemption for me. B-Sides & Badlands is thriving, and pretty much always has, truth be told, and on the eve (x25) of my 33rd birthday, I find myself mesmerized back into the song’s delicious orbit. Every pop song dreams to be such a monumental banger as “Catch My Breath,” which sees Clarkson soaring high above the clouds and casting off every single layer of toxicity that had long been weighing her down and binding her to the earth. “I’ll spend the rest of my time / Laughing hard with the windows down,” she crows on the second verse, as a way to set up her new found liberation and self-reliance. She comes to greater acceptance of the past, especially the first 10 years of her prolific superstar career, and learns to feel even more comfortable in her own skin.

The hook is a hope-struck manifesto ripe for the new year. And as cliche as it probably is, it’s time for a new me, too. “Catching my breath, letting it go / Turning my cheek for the sake of the show,” she sings, the lead-up to the dazzling, wispy hook that takes absolutely no prisoners on its way to the sun. “Now that you know, this is my life / I won’t be told what’s supposed to be right…” With the chorus, she possesses both charm and swagger, as only Clarkson can deliver: “Catch my breath / No one can hold me back, I ain’t got time for that / Catch my breath / Won’t let ’em get me down, it’s all so simple now.”

The lesson is quite simple: don’t let anyone tell you no. A no is simply a gateway to your true destiny, and there is beauty in both accepting that and brandishing failure as a torch into the wilderness. Get going. I know I will be.

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