"Broken Heels" is a song performed by British singer
Alexandra Burke
Alexandra Imelda Cecelia Ewen Burke (born 25 August 1988) is a British singer, songwriter and actress. She won the fifth series of the British television series ''The X Factor'' in 2008, and has been signed to Epic Records, RCA Records and Syc ...
, released as the second single from her 2009 debut album, ''
Overcome''. It was written by the Moroccan-Swedish producer
RedOne
Nadir Khayat ( ar, نادر الخياط; born 9 April 1972), better known by his stage name RedOne, is a Moroccan singer, songwriter, record producer and record executive.
As a record producer and songwriter, he has worked with many high-profi ...
, Bilal Hajji,
Savan Kotecha
Savan Harish Kotecha is an American songwriter and record producer from Austin, Texas. Kotecha is of Indian (Gujarati) descent. He was also the executive music producer of the 2020 film '' Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga'', for ...
and produced by RedOne.
The single was released on digital download in the United Kingdom on 17 January 2010
and physically on the following day, on 18 January 2010. It peaked at number 8 on the
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...
on 24 January 2010.
Writing and inspiration
"Broken Heels" was written by
Bilal Hajji
Bilal Hajji, sometimes also known as The Chef (at times Bilal "The Chef" or Bilal "The Chef" Hajji) is a Moroccan-Swedish songwriter and record producer. Based in Sweden, of Moroccan origin, he has worked with many worldwide artists and celebriti ...
,
Savan Kotecha
Savan Harish Kotecha is an American songwriter and record producer from Austin, Texas. Kotecha is of Indian (Gujarati) descent. He was also the executive music producer of the 2020 film '' Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga'', for ...
and
RedOne
Nadir Khayat ( ar, نادر الخياط; born 9 April 1972), better known by his stage name RedOne, is a Moroccan singer, songwriter, record producer and record executive.
As a record producer and songwriter, he has worked with many high-profi ...
(who also produced the song). In an interview with
IVillage
iVillage, Inc. was a mass media company that operated the ”most popular female-oriented sites” on the internet in the 1990s. In addition to ivillage.com, the company operated iVillage UK, Astrology.com, GardenWeb, and the NBC Digital Health N ...
, Alexandra Burke revealed that she had a lot of say in the making of the song because she did not want to be a "toy" or "robot" in the song's development process.
Burke, in an interview with
Popjustice
Popjustice is a music website founded in 2000 by UK freelance music journalist Peter Robinson, who has worked for ''NME'', ''The Guardian'', ''Attitude'' and many others. It is composed of the work of editor Robinson, features editor Michael Cra ...
, elaborated on her experience of working with RedOne. She said,
I've got to say, Red was the one who basically got my personality out first. Then everything else slipped into place like a puzzle. Red really started it off for me. He had he song
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
already ready for me, right? And then I walked in, and he met me, and he was like, "scrap every song we've just prepared for you, we're going to start from scratch, because you're not the person I thought you would be.' So then he wrote he song
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
according to my personality.
"Broken Heels" came about through a conversation between Burke and RedOne when her footwear made more of an impression than his original song choice. Burke explained, "We started getting into a conversation about why I wear high heels and then the title 'Broken Heels' came up and the song grew out of that."
''Nick Levine'' from
Digital Spy
Digital Spy (DS) is a British-based entertainment, television and film website and brand and is the largest digital property at Hearst UK. Since its launch in 1999, Digital Spy has focused on entertainment news related to television programmes, ...
interperated the song as carrying a good-natured girl power message.
''Fraser McAlpine'' of the ''
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
'' reviewed the lyrical meaning of "Broken Heels" as follows: "It's basically another one of those "girls are better than boys, right girls?" diva brag-jobs, and effectively puts forward the idea that even if a woman is hobbled by uneven footwear she can still kick man-ass when it comes to gold medal standard Olympic partying."
Popjustice said that "Broken Heels" is "a song in which Alexandra explains that she can dance as well as a man, and she can do it even better if her shoes are broken."
-oriented beat.
".
which transitions into a spoken portion where Burke says: "RedOne, you know I can do it better than you/I can do it even better in broken heels".
features Burke singing a "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh/Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh" hook.
...