The Kelly Clarkson Twitter Beef FAQ
On Saturday, Clarkson tweeted about her experience at a Brooklyn curio shop, and the internet erupted. Here’s everything we know about who’s right and who’s wrong—and about Molly, the automaton bird that started it all.
There’s beef in Brooklyn. Grass-fed, Grade A, locally-sourced internet beef. It’s a rare cut that’s been dry-aging for 15 years, since Alec Baldwin first debuted a theretofore unseen feuding style: the social media airing of grievances between an A-list celebrity and a completely unknown entity who’s about to become a celebrity because they’ve just been cast in role of foe. In September 2011, Baldwin tweeted to no one in particular, but also to everyone who followed him: “Starbucks on 93 and B'way. Uptight Queen barrista [sic] named JAY has an attitude problem.” Why—why—would Alec Baldwin do that? Because he could. Because he wanted to. Because if he’d addressed it in person, instead of on social media, I feel certain Jay would have eviscerated him to dust.
All these years later, New York City is once again home to a celebrity vs. small business feud. This time, it’s Kelly Clarkson, engaging in a similar, if more verbose, form of what an aggrieved curio shop owner deemed “asymmetrical social warfare.” And yet, the public has actually found this to be a pretty fair fight between an A-list star, and Art of Play, a strange little Brooklyn store that’s willing to defend its right to not sell its wares—with a vengeance. “KELLY CLARKSON HAS PUT US IN DANGER,” the internet hollers at me. “Why, did she take Wrapped in Red off of Spotify?!” I yell back, horrified.
But no, it’s worse. She’s publicly spatting with the author of Dragons Love Tacos, a children’s book about how dragons take their al pastor. The internet has rung many bells it can never unring, most of them now poised to kill us and/or take our jobs. But no matter what robot writes my blogs in the afterlife, the legacy of social media beef will still live on—because it’s too funny to die; too petty to ever go quietly into the internet archives, even when everyone involved should know better. Sometimes the impulse to publicly air out grievances is simply too much for the heated human mind to resist, especially when that mind has been just a little bit pickled by the acid of celebrity.
On Saturday, Kelly Clarkson couldn’t purchase a $15,000 automaton bird—and now it’s all of our problem.
And per the virality of the resulting feud—46 million views on Clarkson’s inciting tweet and counting—the general public has deemed this a standoff worthy of paying attention to. Just the kind of low-stakes tussle between a strangely relatable celeb and a bizarre but fascinating hipster magician subculture that’s breached containment, giving our minds the small reprieve of something truly dumb to dig in on. There is asymmetrical social warfare in this world, after all—and this ain’t it. This is simply a score to be settled on the internet. And not since Season 1 of American Idol have Kelly Clarkson’s actions demanded such rapt dedication to our cellular phones. Come with me as I dive deep into the details, and even put some boots on the ground to find out why it’s suddenly gotten so difficult to score a little Molly in Brooklyn:
Is there anything I should know about Kelly Clarkson before she set foot into this unsuspecting magic shop?
Yes. In August, Kelly Clarkson voluntarily ended her daytime talk show The Kelly Clarkson Show, and after Kelly-ing-her-last-oke, it seems like she’s got some time on her hands—and some attention span to spare. You know … like how your dad got really into bird watching after he retired, and now he’s calling you at 8:00 a.m. to talk male cardinal sightings.
So … what happened? How did Kelly Clarkson endanger a small business with her love of birds?
At 3:09 p.m. on Saturday, October 10, Clarkson was fuming after leaving Art of Play and took not to the front-facing camera of TikTok, nor the stereotypical Notes-app-to-Instagram pipeline; no, Kelly Clarkson tweeted her beef. An Internet SVU detective would tell you: tweeting is the most intimate and expedient form of social media violence. Seemingly the moment she was able, Clarkson dashed off her grievance to 8.8 million followers: “Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy,” she began. Which does immediately bring to mind a mystery within the mystery …
How far did Kelly Clarkson have to drive to get to Brooklyn?
Ultimately, we know that Clarkson was headed to an area of Brooklyn on the border of Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, just across the East River from Manhattan, where she lives. Which is to say, not exactly deep Brooklyn, nor a car ride that would constitute “all the way” by New York City standards. But the difference between a short half-hour drive and a long half-hour drive could very well be what awaits you on the other side. Clarkson continued her statement to say that inside the store, she “literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me.”
Suddenly we are introducing characters with abandon! What is “it?” Who is “he?!” We get a clue in Kelly’s sarcastic closing suggestion: “But y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman.” Never one to refuse a dare, I went to Art of Play to find out what had yanked Kelly Clarkson back into the Twitter beefs of 2016 yore.
What is Art of Play? Sounds … porny.
Only in the way that magicians are sometimes porny. But other than that—and a coffee table book near the register called BIG ORGASM—this shop’s association with sex work begins and ends with Clarkson’s accusation of being Pretty Woman’d there. Art of Play is quite literally a store for games: A high-end gift shop on Atlantic Avenue that sells puzzles, games, art books, and novelty items you might purchase for a person in your life you’ll never truly know. There’s an old-timey feel to its trinkets, many of them featuring retro fonts, and the kinds of low-tech, brain-busting puzzles your parents purchased for you as a kid in the hopes they would keep you from turning on the TV and discovering The Real World: Seattle. Didn’t work! Now I’m an adult, 200 tweets deep into trying to figure out the giant culture storm swirling around what is a truly tiny store. There’s a secret theater for magic shows hidden behind the back wall of bookshelves, sure. But I simply cannot believe this is the 20-foot x 20-foot space that caused all this conversation. And something even tinier, and even more controversial, awaits inside.
What could Kelly Clarkson possibly not afford inside a fancy curio shop?
Well, I think Kelly’s point is that Kelly Clarkson could afford anything inside any store, perhaps excluding Megayachts R’ Us. So, it was time for Art of Play to put down BIG ORGASM and clock the hell in. Which is to say, the shop responded to Clarkson’s accusations of judgment with a five-slide Instagram carousel featuring some deeply unknowable graphic design decisions, and a caption that began: “Yesterday, Kelly Clarkson visited us in Brooklyn and inquired about buying ‘Molly,’ a one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird automaton who plays an important role in the magic shows we host here.” And listen, I know that it’s sometimes just some freak alignment of the planets that gets the WiFi-having world obsessed with something on the internet, but you must admit: as far as lead sentences go, that’s an intriguing one!
If you’re wondering what an automaton is, it’s a relatively self-operating mechanism, designed to follow a predetermined sequence of operations. Which, in this case, means Molly the bird is permanently installed into the left-hand wall of Art of Play, along with her mechanism: the series of pulleys and levers that make her sing and dance when operated with a crank.
Could one tiny animatronic bird really be worth all of this fuss?
Well, yes. Molly is remarkable, bewitching to the eye and spirit; she is the Helen of Troy of Cobble Hill. When I saw her in the flesh, she was glowing but silent, as if to say: You know you’re that bitch when you start all this conversation.
So why the fuck would Art of Play show Kelly Clarkson something she can’t have?
Molly is one of the only things in the store that employees (who are mostly hobbyist magicians) aren’t actively—and in my experience, constantly—encouraging customers to pick up and play with. The statement from the store, which also points out the “surreal” experience of being a small local business “suddenly attacked by 8 million people who have never visited our store,” suggests that Molly’s whole deal is fairly obvious when you encounter her. She’s a part of the store, she’s not an item in the store. And I would agree. However, I didn’t enter Art of Play with the intention—or the pocketbook—to acquire a relatively self-operating automaton. That’s where Kelly Clarkson and I differ—and she shot back at the store on Instagram.
“So the whole conversation we had when I asked you if it was for sale whilst pointing to the price tag hanging on the wall with the title Singing Bird didn’t happen as you elevator eyed me saying in a condescending tone ‘yes, it’s for sale but it costs 15,000 dollars so if you’d like me to find something comparable for you I can,’” Clarkson wrote, with an impressively lengthy sentence structure, a surprising use of “whilst,” and the sheer will to convey that the people who run this store acted like she was too poor to afford a $15,000 bird.
Sorry, is this bird for sale, or what?
According to Art of Play’s response to the response to the response, in one final Instagram statement, they said that when Clarkson inquired about Molly, they told her that Molly “serves as a de facto mascot for our shop,” but she has “a nearly identical automaton” in Seattle that the artist, Bliss Kolb, said he would sell for $15,000. “We explained all of this to Kelly Clarkson,” the statement said. But I can understand why Kelly Clarkson was frustrated with an explanation that a different automaton bird located across the country was actually what the price tag referred to—something that may have felt like hearing a lie in real time, and therefore made her feel she was being judged and rejected. But I also don’t think it can be overstated that this is a shop started by (millionaire) adult twin magicians, along with a children’s book author magician, who together mostly hire other magicians to outfit their shop and sell their fancy kaleidoscopes.
The magician’s code simply isn’t one of customer service or “typical” “social” "etiquette"; it’s one of mystery and illusion, as I understand it. Rather than the employees of this store being full jerks, or Kelly Clarkson being a full diva, overall this feels like a pretty standard miscommunication (a piece of art with a price next to it that is not, in fact, for sale) and a monumental mismatch of vibes. Kelly Clarkson wanted to be taken seriously as an art customer at the puzzle store where the art isn’t for sale.
Say, has Kelly Clarkson been involved in any other rare art controversies?
Strangely, yes. In 2012, Clarkson placed the highest bid at a British auction to acquire a turquoise and gold ring once owned by Jane Austen, only one of three known pieces of jewelry known to have belonged to the author, and was ready to bring it back to the United States with her. But because the ring was deemed a rare national treasure, UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey temporarily banned it from leaving the country, giving the Jane Austen House Museum time to launch a “Bring the Ring Home” campaign to raise enough money to buy the ring back from Clarkson. She willingly sold it to the museum for the original £152,450 price she paid for it, and had a replica made for herself to wear. No hassles, no tweets, and quite diplomatic, all told. But having felt the sharp sting of rejection to become the rightful owner of a rare piece before, perhaps Clarkson was none too keen to be steered toward the replica route once more.
What’s going on with this other, cheaper, bird?
Art of Play said it had “a different singing bird automaton,” one made by a clockworking shop in Germany available for sale in their store, and that they suggested to Clarkson as an alternative to Molly that she “could have taken home with her that day” for around $2,000. Clarkson calls the offer of a much less expensive “comparable for [her]” bird an idiotic suggestion that lost them a huge sale.
Did Art of Play make a big mistake? Huge?
I just can’t stop thinking about how Kelly Clarkson drove to Brooklyn specifically to go to this store with “a few things in mind to buy”—maybe one of those things was Molly. Maybe she’d heard a tale of a unique piece of art and wanted it for her collection. (As recently as last summer, Kelly Clarkson said she was renting in New York City, so I’m not precisely sure what she planned to do with a stripped-down cuckoo clock that requires permanent wall installation.)
Molly is mostly only fired up in her full automaton form ahead of the live magic shows in the back of the shop, so in the five-minute visit when Clarkson became so determined to acquire the bird, she hadn’t even seen her fly or flap or flutter. The employee she asked about buying Molly probably gave her the canned answer they give when anyone inquires about Molly: Yes, she has a price tag; no, she’s not for sale; she has a twin that is currently in Seattle, and if you want to pay $15,000 for it, and I guess acquire a local Geppetto to install it in your home, you can talk to the artist. Or we, a store that does actually need to make money, have this other bird we’re willing to part with …
And this, I think, is where Kelly Clarkson gets really pissed. When she sees the substitute bird—the bird automaton they deem her worthy of. Because I’ve also now seen this backup bird at Art of Play—it’s two very small birds, actually. They’re inside a glass cloche, sat atop a much more typical wind-up machination, like a slightly fancier snow globe. It’s no Molly. How could it be? It’s a fraction of the (theoretical) price. A theoretical price that now, following the social media blowup, has been changed from $15,000 to $15,000,000 on the tiny tag, which now reads: “The world’s most famous singing bird automata!” Hey, maybe they were dicks to Kelly Clarkson in there on Saturday? Maybe they were intentionally evasive? As I looked at the $2,000 automaton inside the store, an employee came over and offered to demonstrate it for me, only for another, higher-ranking employee to come over and whisper in his ear that they’re not doing demonstrations today. Maybe magicians aren’t to be trusted …
Of course, this is all a theory. Because of all of her many skills and talents, the one thing Molly the bird can’t do? Talk. And tell us what the hell actually happened between the Art of Play employees and Kelly Clarkson inside that store on Saturday! Luckily … we have the tapes.
What really happened with Kelly Clarkson inside Art of Play?
Late Tuesday night, after we spent days wondering who’s been telling the truth in this feud, the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast published exclusively obtained footage of Kelly Clarkson entering Art of Play. We see her pick up a kaleidoscope and a few other items she seems to be enjoying. And then she asks an employee about Molly. He’s drinking coffee and crossing his legs casually, almost like he’s there as a guest as well. She looks confused. There’s no audio, but to me this looks like someone (Clarkson) trying to understand an explanation that makes no logical sense, and then taking that lack of logic as a personal slight, as opposed to just … perhaps … something illogical happening in a gift shop run by magicians. In the footage, there’s some pointing at the price tag from Kelly, and some pointing at the alternative bird from the shopkeeper. And then Clarkson conscientiously places all the items she’d been holding back in their rightful place and expresses some seemingly fiery words at a different employee she hadn’t spoken to before on her way out the door. She was in the shop for only four minutes and 50 seconds. And 15 minutes later, she posted the tweet that would soon cause one of the shop owners to utter a sentence that hadn’t been said since a room full of American Idol hopefuls listened to a 20-year-old sing “At Last” in a shirt made out of her own jeans …
“Kelly Clarkson has put us in danger.”
Do I need to choose a side here?
No. Everyone is going to be fine. I understand that this has clearly been overwhelming for the magicians of Art of Play and that Kelly Clarkson felt unexpectedly judged on a Saturday afternoon. But the worst thing that’s happened to anyone involved in this internet phenomenon is being either in possession of or not in possession of an automaton bird. Kelly Clarkson still made the iconic album Breakaway, featuring “Since U Been Gone” and the underrespected hit “Behind These Hazel Eyes.” Art of Play has most assuredly made more money this week than it’s made all year.
I feel certain that if Bliss Kolb wanted to start cranking out Molly offspring, there would be a hot market for that. And as for me and my internet people, we are culturally richer for having learned about Molly the bird, the true winner here. One of the employees inside the store told me that people love coming in and checking out their wares because nothing inside is truly a secret, even the sleight of hand in the magic shows. They’re just a mystery waiting to be solved—and people love trying to solve a mystery.
