Kelly Clarkson's voice flew with the Eagles on a recent episode of "The Kelly Clarkson Show." In one of her Kellyoke segments, the pop superstar sang "Desperado" with only piano accompaniment by her music director, Jason Halbert.
Clarkson turned the gentle soft rock classic into a pop diva belter, adding some punch to one of the more subdued Eagles songs sung by the band's drummer, Don Henley.
"Kelly has a Texas sound that adds so much to songs like this," wrote one commenter. "The pain and anguish is amplified by her God-given accent and dominates even when she ups the tempo."
A concept album of sorts, the Eagles' 1973 LP Desperado preceded Bon Jovi in likening singer-songwriters to modern-day drifters and outlaws. Though it was never released as a single, the title track became one of the band's best-known songs.
"Desperado" began as a song fragment Henley had been sitting on since the '60s. He finished it after the Eagles formed with guitarist and soon-to-be frequent collaborator Glenn Frey.
"Glenn came over to write one day, and I showed him this unfinished tune that I had been holding for so many years," Henley told Cameron Crowe. "I said, 'When I play it and sing it, I think of Ray Charles— Ray Charles and Stephen Foster. It's really a Southern gothic thing, but we can easily make it more western.' Glenn leapt right on it— filled in the blanks and brought structure. And that was the beginning of our songwriting partnership ... that's when we became a team."
"That same week we wrote 'Desperado' and 'Tequila Sunrise'," Frey added. "I think I brought him ideas and a lot of opinions; he brought me poetry— we were a good team."
In 1976, the song "Desperado" made it onto the Eagles album Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), which became one of the top-sellers of all time.
