Artist News

Kelly Clarkson says label forced her to work with “not good guy” Dr Luke

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 8 March 2016

Kelly Clarkson has clarified, a little, what she meant when she responded to Kesha’s recent court battle with producer and label boss Dr Luke by tweeting: “Trying to not say anything since I can’t say anything nice about a person … so this is me not talking about Dr Luke”.

As much previously reported, Kesha Sebert accuses Lukasz Gottwald of plying her with drugs and alcohol and raping her as a teenager. Gottwald claims that the allegations and resulting lawsuit are an attempt by Sebert to get out of her contract with his Kemosabe label, a Sony imprint.

The long-running dispute became front-page news recently when a New York court refused to grant Sebert an injunction allowing her to release records with another label while the legal battle with Gottwald slowly goes through the motions.

In a new interview with Australian radio station KIIS FM, Clarkson – who worked with Gottwald on various records, including some of her big hits – makes no comment on Sebert’s allegations, but makes it clear that there is little love lost between her and the producer.

“I can remark on his character” she says, adding “and unfortunately when you have that poor a character, and so many artists don’t like you, and don’t like working with you, that’s not normal”. She then insisted that “I get along with everybody I work with, I love everyone I work with” but “he’s just not a good guy for me, to me”.

The singer then added that, while Gottwald had had a hand in making hit records for her, she had continued to work with the producer only under pressure from her record company. “I got blackmailed by my label”, she went on, “it was a really hard time for me. They were like, ‘We will not put your album out if you don’t do this'”.