Songfacts®:

• On May 25, 2020, 46-year-old African-American George Floyd was arrested in Minneapolis for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. A white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes while handcuffing him. Shortly before dying, Floyd was heard saying, "I can't breathe." The death of Floyd at the hands of a white police officer sparked a series of rallies and protest marches in major cities across America and elsewhere.
• H.E.R. wrote this social justice song inspired by the events, using Floyd's last words as a metaphor for what African-Americans experience under systemic racism.
  
  I can't breathe
  You're taking my life from me
  I can' breathe
  Will anyone fight for me?
  
  The songstress is calling for an end to the continual stifling of the African-American community.
• H.E.R. premiered the song during the June 10, 2020 episode of iHeartRadio's Living Room Concert Series. The performance was filmed at a recording studio in Brooklyn with only the singer and her band present because of the global coronavirus pandemic lockdown.
  
  "These lyrics were kind of easy to write because it came from a conversation of what's happening right now, what's been happening, and the change that we need to see," said H.E.R. introducing "I Can't Breathe." "I think music is powerful when it comes to change and when it comes to healing and that's why I wrote this song, to make a mark in history. And I hope this song does that."
• This won Video For Good at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards.
• This took Song Of The Year at the Grammy Awards in 2021. In her acceptance speech, H.E.R. said: "We wrote this song over Facetime, and I didn't imagine that my fear and my pain would turn into impact and possibly turn into change, and I think that's what this is about. That's why I write music, that's why I do this."
  
  She went on to say that she wrote the song in her bedroom at her mom's house, and the first person she played it for was her dad, who cried when he heard it.
• H.E.R. originally wrote the song with frequent collaborator Tiara Thomas ("Damage," "Fight For You"). After starting the track off, they asked New York producer Dernst "D'Mile" Emile, who has known H.E.R since she was 11, to help them complete it.
  
  D'Mile recalled to Genius that he was at the studio already working on something else when he got the call. They sent him a voice note of H.E.R. laying the track. "I heard it was from a conversation that H.E.R. and Tiara were having at that time," he said. "That was around the time when all this Black Lives Matter stuff was going on and all these riots were happening. So, it was like fresh off of that."
  
  D'Mile was about to leave the studio but decided to stay and work on the track. He kept the voice note of H.E.R. playing the guitar, and that's what everybody hears on the record. That was the only part that wasn't recorded in the studio. "Of course, she was singing in the voice note, but she did re-sing it later on, officially," he said. "But I kept the guitar from the voice note because it was just perfect."
• H.E.R. started writing the song while quarantined at her mother's house. "The George Floyd protests were everywhere - on social media, on the news - and I couldn't look away," she told the BBC regarding its original inspiration.
  
  H.E.R. got on the phone with Tiara Thomas and they "started talking about pain, anxiety, and the fact this could be one of our family members." The songstress picked up the acoustic guitar that stays next to her bed at her mom's house, played some chords and started singing, "I can't breathe." Thomas told her, "Yo, that just gave me chills."
  
  Realizing she'd expressed something that "needed to be said," H.E.R. recorded the song into her phone and sent it to D'Mile, who came up with some bluesy acoustic instrumentation. "So the guitar you hear is the same guitar I played into Voice Notes in my bedroom," she recalled.