Kelly Clarkson’s Voice Took Me to Heaven | Concert Review (Studio Sessions – The Las Vegas Residency 2025-2026)

I’ve been a fan of Kelly Clarkson’s music since I was a little girl. Though I have a soft spot for her first two studio albums, I still think she’s put out some stellar music since then. I don’t like everything she’s done, but I admire her for trying out different genres like dance-pop, country, soul, R&B, and rock, etc. The girl loves what she does and she was born to be an entertainer!

I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not it was necessary to see Kelly Clarkson live because I didn’t know if it was what I truly wanted or if it was something I needed to please my childhood self for nostalgia purposes. When Clarkson announced her Studio Sessions Las Vegas residency, however, I thought, “why not?” Given how expensive concert tickets are for bigger artists nowadays, I might as well see her now before the ticket prices get worse. My mom and I were in section 202 and without the taxes and fees, I spent $528 for both tickets. If you add up the Ticketmaster fees, you do the math for how much I spent overall! Nonetheless, my mom and I were excited to see Clarkson live because we both were huge fans of American Idol and her music took us back to a much simpler time when streaming services and AI weren’t a thing.

The concert took place on Friday, November 14, 2025 at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, but instead of finding our seats 30 minutes to an hour before the show, like I’ve done in the past, we entered the venue pretty late. Though the tickets said the show was supposed to start at 8:00 p.m., we didn’t sit down until 8:14 p.m., just when the show was about to start. It was so sudden that I almost forgot to put in my earbuds; thankfully, I remembered to put them in when Clarkson started the first song, “Me.” Because my mom and I were more familiar with her first two studio albums, as well as the typical hits, we looked up her previous setlists for the Las Vegas residency and thankfully, I knew half of the songs listed, so the research wasn’t as extensive as it was for New Kids on the Block. 

Not going to lie, as soon as Clarkson started singing the opening lines to “Me,” her voice sounded so pure and perfect, it was like an angel came down and took me to heaven! She sounds exactly like she does on her albums and gosh, her voice has held up really well since she debuted on American Idol in 2002. I loved the setup for Clarkson’s Las Vegas residency. It was basically a recording studio with a live band, a piano, and string instruments. For some reason, it gave me Nashville vibes, which suits her since she’s from the South and she has dipped her toes in country music before. That’s not all, though! Given her lively and infectious personality, she interacted with the audience throughout the whole show. She told stories about growing up, what’s been going on in her personal life, and the inspiration behind her songs. Surprisingly, she swore a lot while speaking to the audience, which was fine with me! 

“My kids can wipe their own a**es now; it’s insane!”, said Kelly Clarkson.

It was awesome because she’s an amazing talk show host and for a while, I’ve been curious about what it would be like to attend a taping for her critically acclaimed talk show, The Kelly Clarkson Show. So not only did my mom and I get a full-blown concert experience, we also got a hilariously, entertaining talk show experience. Clarkson even did a cover of Roxette’s “It Must’ve Been Love,” like how she does “Kellyoke” numbers at the beginning of her talk show. What blows my mind is she was never a good speaker when she was a little girl, so her mom gave her a journal for her to write down her thoughts, they eventually turned into song lyrics and the rest is history. But seriously, Clarkson has a great sense of humor and it comes naturally to her. If you’ve seen her on American Idol, she had a quirky and fun personality, and that hasn’t changed one bit. That’s what I love most about Clarkson; she didn’t let the fame get to her head and stayed exactly the same. 

Because my mom and I were further away from the stage, I couldn’t take as many photos as I would’ve liked to, but that was fine because I got to enjoy my favorite songs more. I was jamming to bangers like, “Walk Away” and “Miss Independent,” like it was the early 2000s! I didn’t enjoy the dance-pop stuff like, “Heat,” “Dance with Me,” and “Heartbeat Song,” but when she brought out the soul, I was all ears. Speaking of soul, my favorite musical moments of the show were when it was just her voice and the piano / string instruments. No drums, no guitars, no bass guitar, no backing vocals, no distracting dance beats. Just Clarkson on the microphone and very few instruments. The reason being, I was able to hear how pure and gorgeous her vocals were. There were times where I felt the other instruments were distracting and it got a little too chaotic. Is it wrong for me to say I thought “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and “My Life Would Suck Without You” sounded out of tune? 

My favorite songs performed that night included the gospel-based, “Me,” the rough around the edges, “Walk Away,” the sassy and soulful, “Didn’t I,” the emotional train wreck of “Mine,” and the piano version of “Beautiful Disaster.” To get into the Christmas spirit, Clarkson also did one of her Christmas songs, “Underneath the Tree,” which I’m not crazy about, but that was a clever way to separate the November dates from the previous dates she did for the Las Vegas residency this year. I also got to bring up her outfits she wore for the concert because wow, she looked stunning! Her first outfit was a David Bowie t-shirt and black skinny jeans with a rainbow flare on the bottom to match her David Bowie shirt, which looked really cool when she was jumping up and down on stage. For her encore, she wore a classy and old-school, black outfit with a semi-revealing front. Nonetheless, she looked awesome as f*ck!

Clarkson put on an amazing show full of music, charisma, laughter, and joy. Being the gracious host that she is, she thanked every single member in her band, including the musicians who played the string instruments. She was smiling on stage and everyone in the audience was having a blast! The show was almost two hours long; it ended at 10:06 p.m. Thankfully, the people at the Kelly Clarkson show were WAY nicer than the people at the New Kids on the Block show my mom and I attended two nights previously. We met a lovely lady who was only staying in Las Vegas for 36 hours to see the show and another lovely lady who was wearing a cute and sparkly, black dress from Amazon. We ended up sitting in the same row as the latter, which was quite a coincidence. 

Overall, my mom and I enjoyed the show a lot. We enjoyed it so much that my mom bought us shirts after the gig, which thank you mom (and sorry they were so expensive)! Would we see Kelly Clarkson live again? It’s hard to say, but if she comes back to Las Vegas and the tickets are relatively reasonable, we’ll consider it. However, if this was a one and done thing, at least I got to check Kelly Clarkson off my concert bucket list!

Concert Setlist

1. Me

2. Walk Away

3. Heat

4. Dance with Me

5. Behind These Hazel Eyes

6. Heartbeat Song

7. Breakaway

8. Didn’t I

9. Because of You

10. Mine

11. Beautiful Disaster

12. Piece by Piece

13. It Must Have Been Love (Roxette cover)

14. Miss Independent

15. Favorite Kind of High

16. My Life Would Suck Without You

17. Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)

Encore

18. Where Have You Been

19. Underneath the Tree

20. Since U Been Gone

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Lana