Piece by Piece, released in 2005, is the second
album by Georgian
jazz and
blues singer
Katie Melua.
Its first single, "
Nine Million Bicycles", became Melua's first top five hit in the UK and caused controversy when science writer
Simon Singh said the lyrics "demonstrates a deep ignorance of cosmology and no understanding of the scientific method".
The second single was a double
A-side comprising "
I Cried for You" and a cover of
The Cure's "
Just Like Heaven". The former song was written after Melua met the writer of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and is about
Jesus and
Mary Magdalene, while the latter was recorded for the soundtrack to the film
Just Like Heaven. The single peaked outside the UK top twenty, and the album's third single, "
Spider's Web" (which Melua wrote when she was eighteen, during the
Iraq war) did not reach the top forty.
Melua wrote the title song "Piece by Piece" after she broke up with her boyfriend
Luke Pritchard, and "Half Way up the Hindu Kush" was written by Katie and
Mike Batt as a joke playing on the innuendo implicit in the title phrase, which cropped up in a conversation about scarves on a train journey. Katie wrote the chorus and Mike the verses. Alongside covers of "
Blues in the Night" and
Canned Heat's "
On the Road Again", the album includes "Thank You, Stars", which was previously released as a
B-side on Melua's debut single "
The Closest......
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