She just parties on

A grimy fog crept through Universal City on Sunday evening just before Kelly Clarkson took the stage at the Gibson Amphitheatre. No buzzing crowd of latecomers rushed in from the parking garages; a lone scalper tried to hawk his tickets for $10. The will-call ticket line was devoid of VIPs -- they were all downtown at the American Music Awards, watching this year's bestselling stars glad hand each other. The scene out front at a show is rarely this quiet. So this was what pop purgatory looked like.

Inside the building, though, something bright and hopeful was happening. The lobby buzzed with young women thrilled to be so close to Clarkson. Moms with tweens, twentysomethings in perfumed packs, slightly older ladies dragging along dutiful dates zoomed toward their seats, eager for Clarkson to emerge.

The scrim lifted to show Clarkson in the red gown she wore on the cover of her latest album, "My December." That dress soon fell away to reveal pants and a satin top more suitable for rocking out. For the next hour and a half, that's what she determinedly did. Her affable patter suggested no bitterness about the year she's had, but on nearly every song, she roared until it seemed her lungs would burst. The pop machine may have temporarily exiled Clarkson; she and her fans turned purgatory into a party.

A superstar after selling an estimated 11 million copies of her second album, "Breakaway," the first-year "American Idol" winner took a chance with "My December," writing much of the material and going in a darker, harder direction. It paid off in thorns.

She fought publicly with her record label, saw a summer stadium tour go bust, fired one manager, hired another (Narvel Blackstock, the husband of her current mentor, Reba McEntire) and endured a round of shaming at the hands of music industry pundits. Eventually she apologized "to those whom I have done disservice," especially RCA Records President and legendary record man Clive Davis. She'll certainly take note of Davis' advice on her next project.

For now, though, there's this album, full of songs she co-wrote and clearly loves to perform. Sunday she relished them, though her fans sang along much more heartily with her older hits.