Kelly Clarkson Thanks Céline Dion for Praise as She Jokes It Offsets Her ‘Bad’ American Idol Cover Due to Laryngitis

You never know who’s watching! Following Kelly Clarkson’s emotional Kellyoke rendition of Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” the Canadian singer raved about the performance.

“Kelly, when I came back from the Olympics, I got to watch and listen to your reaction to my performance on the Eiffel Tower,” Dion, 56, said in an Instagram Reel earlier in the week. “It was so sweet to hear you — your voice. Your voice was breaking and it touched me so tremendously. You were crying and then you made me start crying. What’s up with all this friggin’ crying?”

“I just saw you singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and I’m crying again,” she continued. “You were absolutely incredible, fantastic. I loved it so much. I hope we can see each other in person soon, very soon. And I hope we’re not going to start crying. I love you so much.”

Clarkson, 42, responded on Oct. 8 to Dion and gave context for how important the feedback is to her.

“22 years ago on American Idol, I got laryngitis. Everybody got sick one week because they worked us ragged,” Clarkson explained. “They had no idea the show was going to blow up.”

She continues, “The week that I had laryngitis… I had to sing Céline Dion’s ‘I Surrender All.’ I bawl that night because I’m just mortified that Céline Dion is going to see this performance. I could have cared less about votes at that point.”

Clarkson goes on to further describe the performance as “so bad because I was so sick.”

The talk show host and singer said that her Kellyoke version of “My Heart Will Go On” made things right over two decades after her first attempt at covering Dion, whom she said is one of her “main inspirations.” “I felt like I sang it alright, you know? I didn’t have laryngitis, I wasn’t sick, and I got to honor someone who is such a hero to me vocally.”

In the first season of Idol for Clarkson’s Top 4 performance, she sang Dion’s “I Surrender” off the 2002 album A New Day Has Come. Judge Simon Cowell alluded to the cast-wide illness, commending Clarkson for singing in spite of “how stressed all of your vocals are this week.” He even says, “The fact that you can talk this week is a miracle.”

Cowell then goes on to tell Clarkson, “I think you’ve just put yourself up in the same league as Céline and Mariah Carey.”

In PEOPLE’s June 2024 cover story, Dion opened up about her stiff-person syndrome diagnosis and what that means for her return to the stage. “I don’t want to sound pretentious, but [singing] has never been difficult. I got scared that it was harder,” she confessed. “I was like, that’s not supposed to be hard.”

But the future is promising, as she said, “I have a wonderful coach vocally, and physically [my treatment plan] is making such a difference.”