 The video was uploaded to MTV 's website on August 9 , 2004 . The video reached number five on the AOL Music Top Video chart in September 2004 , with 740 @,@ 176 million streams . Kate Aurthur of The New York Times praised the music video for successfully illustrating the message of a girl following her own dream , which is a central theme shared by the song , the movie and Clarkson 's biography . She also lauded the director of the video , Dave Meyers , for his ability to use Clarkson 's evolution as an element to overshadow the distracting clips from The Princess Diaries : Royal Engagement despite noticing that the use of visual metaphors in the music video was overwrought . 
