By Amanda Wicks
After sitting down with Gayle King on CBS This Morning to discuss the meaning behind her latest track “Piece by Piece,” Kelly Clarkson released the song’s music video today.
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“It was a very vulnerable song in a sense of like, saying aloud, ‘Yes, I did have help and somebody did help put me back together,'” she told King. “I think a lot of people would view that as weakness, but I think it’s a strength to trust someone to do that.”
The video, shot in black and white, starts off on a melancholy note. Interspersing close-up shots of Clarkson with other women looking despondently at the camera, things eventually take on a hopeful note as she moves from singing about the father who abandoned her to the husband who restored her.
In a Facebook post about the music video, Clarkson wrote, “I like to think of ‘Piece by Piece’ as the happy ending to ‘Because of You.’ It’s not the happiest story in the beginning, but it’s a real one that I decided to write after a conversation with my sister. So many of us had to grow up without parents to model a healthy relationship for us, so we often get into dysfunctional relationships because it is what is familiar. We end up settling instead of being with someone who is worthy of our hearts and our time. We all deserve to feel worthy of love. We all deserve to be truly loved. 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.”
