Kelly Clarkson was brought to tears after one moving performance on Monday's episode of "The Voice."
Clarkson grew visibly emotional when a singer on her team, Corey Ward, sang her 2009 song “Already Gone” during a rehearsal for his performance in the knockout rounds.
“How dare you come out here and kill my song,” Clarkson told Ward, who delivered a powerful rendition of her moving breakup ballad.
She added that she loved Ward’s original take on her song, which begins with the poignant lyrics, “Remember all the things we wanted/ Now all our memories, they're haunted/ We were always meant to say goodbye.”
“Wow, that is so different,” she said. “Mine is very, like, much in, like, an ethereal place. It’s very, like, head voicey, and, like, that was from the gut. I feel like that’s how it should’ve been sung.”
Snoop Dogg, a "Mega Mentor" on the show this season, added that Ward’s performance gave him chills.
“He just put a chill on my arm. Look here, Kelly. I don’t get chills from men, man,” he said. “Man, what was that all about!”
Clarkson also opened up about how she was feeling when she wrote “Already Gone,” which appeared on her fourth studio album, “All I Ever Wanted.”
“When I wrote ‘Already Gone,’ I was going through something that I thought, ‘It’s OK. It doesn’t always have to work out,’” she explained. “And hearing him sing that to me in my life now, are you, like, smacking me in the face with my message?”
During the knockout rounds, Ward killed it once again with another emotional take on her song, at times belting out stanzas and at times using quieter vocals.
Clarkson was visibly moved once again by his beautiful performance, and said afterward that hearing her song was “the coolest thing a songwriter can experience.”
“I literally was like, well, he just killed my song in front of me,” she said. “I was like, I feel like that’s maybe how that was supposed to sound.”
She also praised Ward on Twitter after his performance.
“I honestly have no words @_coreyward_!” she tweeted. “Your version of Already Gone was pure magic!”
Ward’s epic performance earned him a win during the knockout, meaning he will move onto the live playoffs.
It’s always a bold choice for a “Voice” competitor to sing their coach’s own song, but Ward’s risk definitely paid off!
CORRECTION (April 20, 2021, 10:44 a.m.): An earlier version of this article misstated the name of Clarkson's song. It is "Already Gone," not "Almost Gone."