Kelly Clarkson Changes ‘Piece By Piece’ Lyrics After Brandon Blackstock Divorce

Kelly Clarkson is putting herself first following her divorce from Brandon Blackstock, and she’s reflecting that in her lyrics.

The star made noticeable changes to her 2015 hit, “Piece by Piece,” during her Las Vegas residency performance on Saturday (Aug. 5), telling the crowd, “This song I initially wrote just super hopeful, right? And well, sometimes hopeful turns into hopeless, so here we go.”

In the original song, she belts in the chorus, “But piece by piece, he collected me up / Off the ground, where you abandoned things, yeah / Piece by piece, he filled the holes that you burned in me / At six years old.” 

But in her recent performance, Clarkson changed the lyrics from “he” to “I,” according to ET and videos circulating on social media. Additionally, she replaced, “He never walks away / He never asks for money / He takes care of me / He loves me,” with: “I just walk away / when they ask for money / I take care of me / ’cause I love me.”

Clarkson originally wrote the track about her father, who abandoned Clarkson’s family when she was a kid, and her now ex-husband Blackstock. In June 2020, however, Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock after seven years of marriage, and she channeled the pain of the split into her 10th studio album, Chemistry. She references “Piece by Piece” in her track named after iconic actor Rock Hudson.

“When I wrote ‘Piece by Piece,’ it was a very hopeful song,” the singer previously told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wasn’t able to say everything at the time. A lot of that song is about what I desired and what I hoped and what I saw in someone. And it turns out I might not be singing that song again. It turns out that I maybe did marry into what I didn’t want to do in the first place. So it’s OK now.”

She continued, “It wasn’t for a couple years, but I think that’s the thing about seeing red flags and seeing things that aren’t healthy and recognizing that and not holding on to hope and potential all the time in a relationship. So just a lot of lessons learned, which is, I guess, all you can hope for, getting that it wasn’t all for naught.”