Songfacts®:

• This piano-driven power ballad finds Keys singing about the end of a journey where she is able to assert herself and leave behind the naysayers in her life. "It's been awhile, I'm not who I was before," she coos. "You look surprised, your words don't burn me anymore." "That's definitely my story, 100,000 percent," she told The New York Times. "But that thing happens to all of us. Even though it's my story, it's everybody's story. That's ultimately the goal: that people can feel what you feel."
• Keys told The Boombox how she's celebrating her personal growth in this song. "'Brand New Me' is about the journey it takes to get to a place where you are proud to be a new you," she explained. "There is nothing wrong with growing. There may be people in your life that knew you for a long time and they think of you only as the person you used to be and not the person you now are.
  And this song is a conversation introducing them to the new you. Where nothing can hold you back and no one can hold you down."
• Keys explained that her Girl On Fire album, "is about new beginnings, new perspectives and fresh starts... stripping away all the bad energy in your life and taking full control of the reigns and how you want to live.
  There is something really empowering about finding yourself and your own inner strength," she continued. "On one song, One of the lines I wrote says, 'I'll never be perfect, but at least now I'm brave!'"
• Keys co-wrote the song with the Scottish recording artist and writer Emeli Sandé, one of several collaborations on the Girl On Fire album with emerging singer-songwriters. "I have to say this was such an exciting time for me. I just found an openness in me that I didn't have before," Keys told MTV News. "And because of that I was way more excited and ready to collaborate with people that I admire. I really wanted to do true collaborations where two people from two different worlds mixed and what would happen. ... There's so many cool people that we were able to literally collide and the music just went to a level that it wouldn't have gone if it was just them or just me."
• The music video depicts Keys' journey of self-discovery. It was directed by Diane Martel, who also worked with the singer on her clip for "Like You'll Never See Me Again."