Keri Noble hasn’t had a No. 1 record yet. But the Detroit-raised singer-songwriter is part of one these days.

Inaugural American Idol Kelly Clarkson recorded “If No One Will Listen” — the closing track from Noble’s 2005 album “Fearless” — for her latest release “All I Ever Wanted,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. And that’s certainly put a bit of heat behind Noble’s self-titled new album.

“It seems to be special for (Clarkson) ’cause I talked to her management and they’re all pretty excited about the song,” says Noble, 33, who was born in Texas but moved to Detroit, where her father was a minister, when she was young. “They think it’s going to be a fan favorite at live shows, so I think the song is going to have a life, at least live.

“To me it doesn’t seem like a single. But then I started thinking about all the pop stuff she did, and then she came out with ‘Beautiful,’ which was pretty different from anything else she’s done. Maybe this will happen the same way. That wouldn’t suck.”

Noble — who changed record labels and got divorced during the interim between “Fearless” and “Keri Noble” — says she’s “still figuring out” how her creative universe intersected with Clarkson’s much larger orbit. Noble credits a professional “song placer” in Los Angeles who believed in the song and finally found a home for it.

“A little over a year ago he e-mailed me and said, ‘Don’t get too excited. I’ve seen this kind of thing blow up a million times...’,” Noble recalls. “I was in the middle of the divorce stuff, so it was really on the back burner for me. Then I got some forms to fill out, a W-something, and a friend said to me, ‘That’s what you have to fill out when you’re getting a new job.’

“That’s when I started to think, ‘Is this really gonna happen?’ But even to the last minute my guy was saying that he’s seen people change their minds at the last minute. But it happened, and I really love what she did with the song.”



Keri Noble performs at 9 p.m. Saturday (March 28) at Salem High School, 46181 Joy Road, Canton. Tickets are $12 and $10. Proceeds will benefit WSDP, the student radio station operated by Plymouth-Canton Community Schools. Call (734) 416-7732 or visit www.881TheEscape.com.