Kelly Clarkson Explains ‘Piece by Piece’ Lyric Swap After Divorce: ‘Empowering Thing’

Kelly Clarkson famously tweaked the lyrics to “Piece by Piece” after divorcing Brandon Blackstock — and now she’s offering insight into her creative process.

“I wrote it [when] I was feeling a type of way, and hoping more than [anything],” Clarkson, 43, told concertgoers at her Friday, July 11, Studio Sessions show in Las Vegas. “And then, I changed it a couple summers ago. I had to sing it. I was like, ‘I gotta sing it ‘cause people kept asking for it.’ But, it just didn’t feel right.”

Clarkson wrote and released “Piece by Piece” in 2015 as a love song to Blackstock, 48, contrasting the music manager to her own absentee father. She and Blackstock were married for seven years, going on to welcome two children before Clarkson filed for divorce in 2020. One year after settling their divorce, the singer tweaked the lyrics during an August 2023 show.

Instead of singing “He collected me up” Clarkson belted, “I collected me up,” among other subtle tweaks.

“I was like, ‘I kinda like the way I’m going with it,’ so I changed it just a little bit more,” Clarkson explained on Friday. “It became aware to me that, man, this is a lot to put on one person anyway. Like, therapy, hey! I ended up as more of an empowering thing, like, ‘Cool, it didn’t happen for me, but that doesn’t mean you’re not worthy [or] valuable.’”

Clarkson added the new version of “Piece by Piece” to her Vegas residency setlist.

“It’s more of an empowering thing for me now, and I love it,” she quipped.

The first American Idol champion initially didn’t want to sing “Piece by Piece” anymore after she and Blackstock separated.

“Look, I was finding a hard time singing it], like, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to really sing about that?’” she said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in October 2023. “I was at a very different place when I wrote it.”

She added, “It kind of put perspective on me, as well. It was like, ‘That was a lot of pressure to put on someone, you know, to pick up the pieces of something of your past.’ There was a lot going on for me that day, but it ended up working out.”

According to Clarkson, she first rewrote the tune “literally an hour” before her concert earlier that year.