• After a discussion with her sister about their family life, she co-wrote the song in
a first-person narrative to her father, who left after their parents divorced when she was five years old.
Kelly explained:
"This song is basically my past, present, and future. It's my love letter celebrating
and thanking my husband for being a man that knows how to love me and our children without expecting
anything in return. Also, this is a promise to my kids that I will never cease to love them,
and be present in their lives always."
She further explained:
"From my experience as a child, going through a couple marriages with my mom, I never had a man stick around.
Whenever people said, 'I'm in love,' it didn't really hold very much weight or gravity with me."
"I didn't realize how much that affected me as much as it did until I met Brandon and I fell in love.
I was like, 'Wow, this is a completely different feeling.' I didn't know what I was missing.
I wrote 'Piece by Piece' about a conversation I had with my sister about that."
• It is one of only three songs that she wrote for the album. She explained that she usually writes
"a ton on the records, I didn't this time because I was miserably pregnant."
• Kelly likes to think of this song as the "happy ending" to
Because Of You,
where she sung of how she is scared to fall in love, as she fears going through the same pain her parents did.
• Her emotional performance of the song on the February 25, 2016 episode of
American Idol
was met
with a standing ovation from the audience. She broke down in tears near the end, along with
Keith Urban
.
The video features joyful images of children, mothers and pregnant women. It ends with
Clarkson holding her own baby daughter, River Rose, who leans in to give her mom a sweet kiss.