Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 05/01/2012 at 5:04 PM News

The Popdust Files: billboard music awards, kelly clarkson, linkin park, nelly furtado, usher

We’ve got four more performers May 20 on the Billboard Music Awards: Kelly Clarkson, Usher, Linkin Park and Nelly Furtado. They’ve all got a new single or singles to promote. Guess what they’ll sound like, and chances are you’ll be in right.

In other words, it’s the same story as last time, with different names swapped in. So let’s switch things up once more! Suppose each of these artists did someone else’s song. A cover swap, let’s call it. This could be fantastic! Interesting, at the very least. Our four ideas, below.

LINKIN PARK DOES NELLY FURTADO: “Say It Right” is a guitar, morose piano line and Mike Shinoda verse away from being a downtempo Linkin Park track. Can’t you just hear Chester Bennington wailing out “You don’t mean nothing at all to me! No, you don’t mean nothing at all to me!” We can.

USHER DOES KELLY CLARKSON: “Miss Independent” would be an entirely different song from a man’s perspective. (And a different song from Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent,” for that matter.) More pertinently, it’s the closest Kelly Clarkson’s come to R&B, making it the best fit for Ursh. Update the production, give him room for falsetto, and Miss Independent will basically never want to be independent ever, ever again. There could probably be some fantastic choreography, too.

NELLY FURTADO DOES USHER: Usher’s going to want to do his new material, so let’s throw him a bone: “Lemme See” is close enough to Kelly Rowland’s “Motivation” that a female R&B artist can totally pull it off, particularly someone like Furtado who can bring sass and swagger. Just tweak a couple lyrics and pretend Rick Ross doesn’t have a verse, and you’re good.

KELLY CLARKSON DOES LINKIN PARK: Kelly Clarkson could totally be a closet Linkin Park fan. We could see it. And My December and Linkin Park’s singles overlap enough that swapping vocalists would definitely work. You could pick almost any single, really, but we’re going with “Numb” because someone on YouTube has done the imagination work for us. Check it out, below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlV9pwB95Xk