Songfacts®:

• Allan co-wrote this driving song with Nashville singer-songwriter Sarah Buxton and his pal Odie Blackmon. "He's one of my long time buddies," Allan said of the latter to The Boot. "When I first came to town, I would live on his couch. So it's always fun to have success with your friends."
• Regarding the meaning of "Pieces," Allan explained: "The song is about something I believe, which is how you take something, good or bad, from everyone you meet. The song talks about all the pieces you take with you, whether you know someone for an hour or for a long time."
• Allan said that one of the best "pieces" he has taken is "finding good in others." He explained, "It's that whole no matter how bad or annoying a person is, there's something good you can take from them. I think that's the biggest lesson I've gotten from people."
• Gary Allan explained: "'Pieces,' that was Sarah [Buxton]'s hook. She came with a little bit of it written. I wrote it with Odie Blackmon and her... it was our first time we had written together, and it was a great write. I love the song, though. And it is a song about taking something from everybody, and you do. You take things through life in every relationship, and that kind of spits you out as who you are."
• The song's music video was shot at the Nashville Speedway in one of the tunnels where the cars enter the raceway. The photos you see flying by Allan and his band are actually childhood photos of the singer - "pieces" that made him into who he is today.
• Allan has a long history with Odie Blackmon but this was the first time they added Sarah Buxton to their writing partnership. Blackmon told Roughstock: "We thought bringing Sarah in on a write might be a fun thing to do. She had a little piece of the verse and melody and the word 'pieces.' We all started talking about it and what it meant to us. None of us are young folks any more. We've all lived some life and we were talking about the pieces of our lives... all the different pieces that has brought us to where we are today, whether they were good or bad pieces. I don't think in my early 20s I'd known that."
  
  "Sarah started writing the melody on a piano," added Blackmon. "But it took on a different life with Gary and I playing guitar. I was playing electric and Gary was playing acoustic. When we went in to demo the song, it took on a different life with more of a tempo and groove thing to it. I am so proud of the song and how everything fell into place."