Kelly Clarkson surprised her Las Vegas residency crowd Saturday (August 5) with a poignant lyric change to her song “Piece By Piece.”
Kelly Clarkson kicked off her 10-show Las Vegas residency at the Bakkt Theater at Planet Hollywood on Friday (July 28). Chemistry: An Intimate Evening is running in conjunction with the release of her latest album titled Chemistry.
Ahead of the sold-out dates, the 41-year-old American Idol champ promised fans that every night of the residency was going to be different.
“There’s a lot of songs, and it’s going to be different every night. We’re trying to make it special for everybody,” she said in a video posted to Instagram. “We’re hitting all the new songs from the album in there somewhere. We’re hitting the ones you want to hear, and if we’re not, then you’re just being demanding because we’re singing a lot of songs.”
Clarkson has received rave reviews from who have attended her shows so far. In addition to singing some of her own hits, Kelly brought her popular talk show segment Kellyoke to the stage. But, it has been her not-so-subtle roasting of her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock, that has people talking.
Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock split in 2020 after seven years of marriage.
Much of their divorce battle has been public due to open court records and recent interviews from Clarkson. But, neither party has detailed the reason for their divorce.
Kelly, who is known for her relatability and realness, has spoken candidly about the split and the emotional toll it took on her.
RELATED: KELLY CLARKSON SHARES THOUGHTS ON GETTING MARRIED AGAIN
During her recent Vegas performances, the singer changed lyrics to at least two of her songs to throw shade at her ex.
One of those songs was her 2015 hit “Piece By Piece.” Clarkson wrote the song as an ode her to own father, who abandoned Kelly and their family when she was a child, and her now-ex-husband.
“When I wrote ‘Piece by Piece,’ it was a very hopeful song,” the singer 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.”
Clarkson famously performed the song on American Idol in 2016 and brought the judges to tears, especially Keith Urban who sobbed through the majority of the performance.
But, when Kelly Clarkson sang “Piece By Piece” in Las Vegas this past weekend, the lyrics were very different….and empowering.
In what fans are calling the “healed version” of the song, Clarkson changed the “he” and “I” in the following lyrics to “I” and “me.”
“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 and you know”
The chorus that used to praise her ex-husband and father of her two children was changed from “He never walks away / He never asks for money / He takes care of me / He loves me” to “I just walk away / when they ask for money / I take care of me / ’cause I love me.”
Hear Kelly Clarkson sing the “healed version” of “Piece By Piece” in the video below.