Kelly Clarkson announced pregnancy during concert, plus Taylor Swift and 5 Seconds of Summer's Michael Clifford also talk health issues at shows
Kelly Clarkson announced that she's pregnant with her second child during a concert in Los Angeles. Credit: Getty Images / Frazer Harrison
Performers this week weren't just singing onstage, they were also pouring out their hearts as they delivered emotional messages regarding their health and that of loved ones.
Just over a year after having had her first child with husband Brandon Blackstock, singer Kelly Clarkson revealed mid-concert Wednesday that the couple is expecting another.
"I was not planning on announcing this, but . . . I'm totally pregnant," Clarkson, 33, told the audience at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, according to multiple outlets including CNN and Today.com. When the crowd cheered in response, a teary Clarkson said, "That was not how I wanted to announce that," and joked, through her running mascara, that, "My makeup artist is backstage just, like, hating me."
The "American Idol" winner disclosed her condition after getting emotional during a performance of "Piece by Piece," a song about her relationship with her father. Clarkson, who married talent manager Blackstock in October 2013, had daughter River Rose on June 12, 2014. Clarkson also is stepmother to Blackstock's two children from a previous marriage.
In a second of three medically related concert announcements this week, pop star Taylor Swift spoke of Ronan Thompson, who died of the childhood cancer neuroblastoma three days shy of his fourth birthday in 2011. Swift -- long a supporter of the foundation established in his name, and whose song "Ronan" is about the boy -- became emotional onstage in Arizona Monday as she spoke about him and about her own mother, whom Swift said in April had been diagnosed with cancer.
ABC News and others reported that in online videos from the concert, Swift, 25, said, "One of the bravest things a human being can ever do is to go through something absolutely unbearable and then share their experience with the world. And I think the braver you are, the more brutally honest you are." Holding back tears, she announced that Ronan's mother, Maya Thompson, whose blog about Ronan she had followed, was in the audience.
"I wouldn't know half as much as I know about childhood cancer . . . if she hadn't shared her story about her son Ronan," Swift said, adding that Thompson's blog chronicled "what it's like to watch cancer take over your life." And she became emotional as she said that, "Since then, I've had cancer hit really close to me in my family."
Finally, singer-guitarist Michael Clifford of the Australian rock band 5 Seconds of Summer briefly spoke about his mental health issues during Wednesday's concert in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Detroit-area radio station WDZH-FM posted a clip, in which Clifford, 19, prompted an outpouring of audience and online fan support after saying, "I was fixing some problems with my mental health. . . . I just saw a therapist real quick on the break we had."
