Brandy Clark released her sophomore album, Big Day in a Small Town, in June. The most personal tune on the 11-song offering is the record’s closing track, “Since You’ve Gone to Heaven,” a song Brandy co-wrote with songwriter/producer Shane McAnally.

“My dad was killed in a logging accident in July, right before 9/11,” says Brandy to Nash Country Daily. “I remember after 9/11 happened, everybody was glued to CNN, and I thought since my dad died the world had gone to hell. The idea for ‘Since You’re Gone to Heaven’ came to me then, but it was just too raw at the time. I started thinking about how a lot of times families really fall apart when you lose a big, central figure. Fast forward to many years later, I had become friends with Shane McAnally. We were driving home from Tunica [Mississippi], and I told him that idea, and that I really wanted to write it, but it just feels like there’s no hope in it. And he said, ‘Even if there’s not any hope in it, we need to write it.’ And so we wrote it. The seed of it came from loosing my dad and things we’ve both seen happen and just how it’s hard to go home after you lose somebody.”

Check out Brandy’s performance.