Quarantunes has just had the amazing pleasure and privilege to have an audience with Kelly Clarkson - and the whole world. But it almost didn't happen.
Quarantunes' founder, Julia Segal, usually wakes up at 9am. One fateful day, she just happened to wake up a bit earlier, around 7, and check her email. There it was. An email from the Save The Music foundation reaching out to let her know that Kelly Clarkson was considering having her on for an interview on Quarantunes, and that she'd like to have a pre-interview... in less than an hour.
After a chaotic morning trying to get ready, Julia hopped on a Zoom with a producer, who told Julia she was being recorded so they could judge how well she responded and reacted to questions ("Not scary at all," she jokes). She heard back from the producer in about a week, and that started Quarantunes' journey with Kelly Clarkson.
Of the inciting incident, Julia says, "I wonder about what might have happened if I overslept. I still think it was my subconscious that told me to wake up early that morning."
It was a pretty easy decision for Julia to decide to work with Kelly Clarkson. On top of her songwriting artistry, the positive, feminist, and inspiring messages of Clarkson's music have stuck with Segal since day one, who tries to incorporate similar messaging into her own songs. She notes that Clarkson's work is so important, she finds herself using it as repertoire in a lot of the lessons she teaches for Quarantunes itself.
One of these songs is the ever-important "Stronger", which came up during the interview itself. A picture went up on screen of Julia teaching a songwriting lesson, and Julia remembered it was Clarkson's song that she'd been teaching. At learning this, Clarkson told Julia, "You have good taste." I think most of us would agree. While Julia says it was mind-boggling to be talking to the singer of "Stronger" about her experience teaching that very song, what she said was most surreal was talking to Kelly Clarkson. The view she could see from her computer was video footage of Kelly Clarkson looking up and talking to Julia on the screen in front of her, making an already crazy experience an even wilder one.
The segment of Kelly Clarkson's show is truly a testament to everyone involved in Quarantunes. The teachers, the students, the parents. It all seemed to come together in that short clip. It's created an influx of new members to the Quarantunes family, as our emails and phone lines are flooded with people who've found our message and want to be a part of it. We couldn't be more grateful to Kelly Clarkson for the exposure, and to the Save The Music Foundation, who were instrumental (no pun intended) to this interview.
For those of you who have yet to see the segment, here's the link. Check it out for some amazing moments that you truly have to see to appreciate.