--- title: Kelly Clarkson Reveals She Ditched Her Date on Ellen description: The singer confessed to Ellen DeGeneres that she ghosted on a guy in the middle of their first date when she was 18—and she still feels bad. canonical: https://time.com/4517991/kelly-clarkson-on-ellen/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-04T19:45:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:37:17.665Z og:title: Kelly Clarkson Admits She Was the Worst Date Ever as a Teen og:description: The singer still feels bad for ghosting on a date back when she was 18. og:url: https://time.com/4517991/kelly-clarkson-on-ellen/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Kelly Clarkson Admits She Was the Worst Date Ever as a Teen twitter:description: The singer still feels bad for ghosting on a date back when she was 18. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Kelly Clarkson Admits She Was the Worst Date Ever When She Was 18 > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=d627681a-ac24-4680-9f8b-1435fc701412&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1)  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Oct 4, 2016 7:45 PM UTC  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Oct 4, 2016 7:45 PM UTC [Original _American Idol_ winner Kelly Clarkson](http://time.com/4377176/kelly-clarkson-facebook-live/?iid=sr-link7) made a serious confession to Ellen DeGeneres on Tuesday: she ghosted on a date once when she was 18, and she still feels terrible about. DeGeneres had promised to donate $10,000 to a breast cancer charity if she shared a never-before-heard secret, and Clarkson bashfully came up with this one. Apparently, she had met the date while working as a cocktail waitress, and finally agreed to spend time with him. But it did not go smoothly. “I withstood an hour,” she told DeGeneres about her second-ever date. “And then I went to the bathroom and I left… I’m going straight to hell, I’m aware. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.” She added a public, years-delayed apology, in case he had happened to tune in to her big confession: “If you’re out there, I’m so sorry. I know I’m a horrible human.” She added that she tried to amp herself up to say goodbye properly—but chickened out at the last minute. “Honest to God I had a ‘come to Jesus’ in the bathroom, and I was like, ‘You will go out there, you will put your big girl panties on and do it, and just go out there and just be a good person.’ And I chose to not be.” As for the nameless stranger, he’s probably been singing “Since U Been Gone” all these years to get over the slight. 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