Kelly Clarkson set her inner alt-rocker free when she sang a strangely pretty version of the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979" during the most recent “Kellyoke” segment on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”
Clarkson, 40, belted out the song's lyrics, which are all about growing up in the late 1970s, as her studio band, Y'all, rocked out on the song's effects-laden guitar parts.
While the former "American Idol" champ's voice differs wildly from that of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, Clarkson's soaring delivery highlighted the song's melodic chorus.
"And I don’t even care to shake these zipper blues/ And we don’t know just where our bones will rest/ To dust, I guess, forgotten and absorbed/ Into the earth below," she sang.
"1979" is the highest-charting hit single on the Billboard Hot 100 for the Smashing Pumpkins, who featured the song on the band's landmark 1995 double album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." The song received two Grammy nominations — for both record of the year and best rock performance by a duo or group with vocal.
Its nostalgia-packed video, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, followed a group of suburban adolescents driving around in a vintage Dodge Charger, and won the MTV Video Music Award for best alternative video in 1996.
Clarkson has been in a '90s alt-rock mood of late. Just last month, she donned a grungy flannel shirt to sing Blink-182's “All the Small Things."