Kelly Clarkson Switches Lyrics to “Piece By Piece” After Brandon Blackstock Divorce

Kelly Clarkson changed the lyrics of her 2015 love song "Piece By Piece" in the wake of her divorce from Brandon Blackstock.

By Hayley Santaflorentina Aug 11, 2023 2:32 PMTags
Watch: Kelly Clarkson Seemingly Calls Out Ex-Husband in SCATHING New Songs

Kelly Clarkson is not holding one piece back. 

In the wake of her divorce from Brandon Blackstock, the 41-year-old has once again used lyrics to call out her ex. In this instance, she's changed the lyrics to her 2015 song "Piece by Piece," switching it up from a love song dedicated to Brandon to a self-empowerment anthem. 

"This song I initially wrote just super hopeful, right?" she can be seen saying in a video shared from the August 5 show of her Las Vegas residency. "And well, sometimes hopeful turns into hopeless, so here we go, ‘Piece by Piece.'"

Where the lyrics originally describe a man help fix Kelly's broken heart, she switched the words from "he" to "I," singing, "Piece by piece, I collected me up / Off the ground where you abandoned things, yeah / And piece by piece, I filled the holes that you burned in me at 6 years old."

She followed suit for the chorus, tweaking the words to, "I just walk away / When they ask for money / I take care of me / 'Cause I love me." 

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Kelly Clarkson Through the Years

This is the third time the "Breakaway" artist has recently referenced her now ex, with whom she shares kids River Rose, 9, and son Remington "Remy" Alexander, 7, through music.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

In March, the talk show host did not hold back while covering "abcdefu" by GAYLE for the Kellyoke segment of The Kelly Clarkson Show (and then again during her July 29 Las Vegas show.)

"Forget you and your dad / And the fact that you got half / And my broken heart, turned that s--t into art," she sang on the March 30 episode. "Forget you and your friends / That I'll never see again / Everybody but your dog / You can all get lost."

The lyric swap to "the fact that you got half" as well as her change to "when they ask for money / I just walk away," is likely a nod to the divorce settlement she reached with Brandon, which had Kelly pay a one-time sun of $1.3 million in addition to monthly parental and spousal support. 

Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal

And their divorce played a major part in inspiring her latest studio album Chemistry, which was released at the end of June. 

In the song "Me," the lyrics of which Kelly shared back in April before the single was released, she sings about losing identity in a relationship.

"Loved you so much / Took an army to pull me up," the lyrics read. "But now on the other side / I remembered I could fly."

And much like her rewrite to "Piece By Piece," the song's chorus is a dedicated to self-empowerment: "I don't need somebody to hold me / Don't need somebody to love me / Don't need somebody to pick these pieces up. I put together my broken / Let go of the pain I've been holdin' / Don't need to need somebody / When I got me." 

In fact earlier this year the American Idol alum shared a little behind her thought process while writing Chemistry, which she described as covering "the arc of an entire relationship."

"I was trying to find a word that really described the whole thing because I didn't want everybody to think I was just coming out with some just like, 'I'm angry. I'm sad,'" she said in a March Instagram post. "A whole relationship shouldn't be just brought down to one thing. So there's the good, the bad and the ugly kind of thing going on in it."  

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