The singer closed with a parting shot: "Your store is really cool. Unfortunately, you aren't."
Kelly Clarkson attends the 51st annual Daytime Emmys Awards at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles on June 7, 2024. Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
Kelly Clarkson’s dispute with a Brooklyn store has escalated, with the singer now accusing the shop of lying after it pushed back on her account of a Pretty Woman-style snub.
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Clarkson initially called out the specialty store Art of Play over the weekend in a post shared to X, saying staff had treated her as though she couldn’t afford its merchandise and comparing the experience to the 1990 Julia Roberts film.
The store responded on Sunday (Oct. 11) via Instagram, saying the item Clarkson had asked about — “Molly,” a singing-and-dancing bird automaton used in its magic shows — “is permanently attached to the wall and isn’t for sale.”
Clarkson wasn’t buying it. In a new Instagram Stories post, the 44-year-old disputed the explanation and shared a grainy photo she said showed the bird on display beside a $15,000 price tag. “So you’re not only rude, you’re also a liar. Got it,” she wrote, recounting what she said was a condescending exchange in which an employee quoted the price before offering to find “something comparable.”
She also rejected any suggestion she was punching down at a small business, noting she had been shopping at one when the alleged slight occurred. “You don’t get a free pass to treat people less than in your store just because you are a small business,” she wrote. “It’s not that hard to be kind.” She closed with a parting shot: “Your store is really cool. Unfortunately, you aren’t.”
In its Sunday statement, Art of Play had struck a more conciliatory tone, allowing that the “negative experience Kelly described … would resonate with anyone who has ever felt judged in a shop” and emphasizing that all visitors are “equally welcome.”
The shop also said it had been overwhelmed by the response to Clarkson’s post, writing that it was “suddenly attacked by 8 million people who have never visited our store,” and signed off with a nod to the singer’s own catalog: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” — a line from her 2012 hit “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You).”
The exchange comes during a transitional stretch for Clarkson. In August, she aired the series finale of her Daytime Emmy-winning program The Kelly Clarkson Show after seven seasons, saying she wanted to “prioritize my kids.” She has since returned to NBC’s The Voice for its 30th season alongside Adam Levine, Queen Latifah and Riley Green. One of the most successful artists to emerge from reality television — she won the first season of American Idol in 2002 — Clarkson has topped the Billboard Hot 100 with “A Moment Like This” and “My Life Would Suck Without You” and launched eight consecutive top-five albums on the Billboard 200, most recently 2023’s Chemistry, which debuted at No. 6.