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\n\tKelly Clarkson<\/a> is the latest member of Spotify<\/a>\u2018s Billions Club. \u201cSince U Been Gone,\u201d a single from her 2004 album Breakaway<\/em>, has become her first release to reach one billion streams on the digital streaming platform. <\/p>\n \n\tEarlier this year, Rolling Stone <\/em>named \u201cSince U Been Gone\u201d the 31st greatest song of the 21st century<\/a>, describing the record as \u201ca song that quickly became both an enormous hit and (perhaps because of the sound it was aping) a universal critics\u2019 darling. From the very first line, Clarkson makes the song her own; she later recounted having to argue with her collaborators about her desire to jump an octave for the chorus. But even if the song represented, for Clarkson, a fraught experience with A-list songwriters, it remains a masterful slice of early-aughts indie-pop cross contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tClarkson crafted \u201cSince U Been Gone\u201d with songwriters Max Martin and Dr. Luke, who were inspired by early-aughts alt-rock like Yeah Yeah Yeahs. \u201cIt was a lot of trust in the label because I didn\u2019t know Dr. Luke or Max. And it worked out,\u201d she told Rolling Stone<\/a> <\/em>in 2015. \u201cWe ended up getting together in Sweden and they got to know me as an artist and we amped up the track and made it a little more rockin\u2019. But they didn\u2019t know I was going to go an octave above on the chorus.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn an interview with Di Weekend<\/a> <\/em>published in 2016, Martin credited the record with helping him find his way back after pop underwent a complete overhaul in the wake of his lucrative boy band boom.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201dI\u2019ve learned that things change. The whole boy band thing almost turned into a stock market crash. Then, there was a period when we thought that Pharrell (Williams) and the others came and ruined it all for us with their super cool beats,\u201d Martin said at the time. \u201cMy first thought was: people are idiots for not understanding how great our stuff really is. Then, in the end, I realized: the world has moved on, we\u2019re the ones who\u2019re stuck in one place. So I started listening to other kinds of music. I spent a lot of time in New York and worked with artists who never really got anywhere. Then things took a new turn with \u2018Since U Been Gone.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tClarkson\u2019s memory of the record is more complicated. \u201cBehind the scenes, it was not so fun to record because of situations I won\u2019t talk about, because I won\u2019t sell people out,\u201d she told Apple Music<\/a> in 2020. But I will say, my favorite memory, if I\u2019m being more positive about it, was the fact that I got to show up to a video shoot and completely trash an apartment, and that was my job. That video was possibly one of my favorite videos ever to make, because literally I just got to just have rage, and just break stuff all day long.\u201d<\/p>\n