Brokenhearted

"Brokenhearted" is a breakup song with a positive message: "Life's not over, I can start again." Brandy was just 14 when she recorded it and 15 when the song was released; many teenagers are sure they will never love again when they go through their first painful breakup, but here she lets them know they will.

Released on Brandy's first album, this song was written by the team of Kipper Jones and Keith Crouch, who wrote it on assignment. Brandy had recorded their song "I Wanna Be Down," which Brandy's label, Atlantic Records, was very impressed with. They asked for more songs from the duo, including a ballad. This was a challenge for the lyricist of the pair, Kipper Jones, because he was a 32-year-old many trying to write something a teenage girl would sing. "What in the hell am I doing writing for her?" he said in a Songfacts interview. "Subject-matter-wise, we had to play to her audience, which was other 14-year-old girls," he told Songfacts. "When you write for someone, you do an assessment: Who are they? Who is their audience? What is the message they're trying to convey to that audience? What is the call to action? And with Bandy, her audience was other 14-year-old girls. And what do 14-year-old girls talk about? School and boys. When they talk about boys, what's the deal? Well, they get their hearts broken. So then what is the call to action? You get your heart broken, but you get over it, and that was the message we wanted to convey." "Her mother just absolutely loved it," Jones added. "Those are the kinds of things I would like to see more young people saying to each other. Even then, and especially now, I think a lot of the messages are less than helpful."

The production team Soulshock & Karlin did a remix of "Brokenhearted" with Brandy duetting with Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men. This duet is unusual because they're not singing to each other - the lyrics are the same as the original, but with Morris doing half of the lines, which works because there are no gender-specific references. This version wasn't included on the album but was released as a single and became the most popular version of the song.