Songfacts®:

• This is the title track from American singer and actress Jennifer Hudson's second studio album. The record is her first musical offering since the murder of her mother, brother and nephew by her sister's estranged husband in late 2008.
• This song is based on a diary entry written by Hudson just after her tragic loss; Halo songwriter Ryan Tedder penned the music and produced the track. The collaboration came about after Clive Davis orchestrated the seating of the pair next to each other at his annual pre-Grammy party in 2010. The music-industry legend had been encouraging Hudson to get together with Tedder for months previously and the producer recalled to MTV News: "So I sit down and she's like, 'I hear we're going to work together,' and I'm like, 'Yes, we are. She sends me an e-mail with a diary entry dated right after her family was... and it was, literally, her thoughts immediately after that happened. It started with the phrase, 'I remember me. I used to smile. I used to know love. I used to laugh. I used to hear things.'"
  
  Tedder added that Hudson's journal jottings were "about four or five paragraphs" and revolved around her initial response to the stunning loss. He recalled: "She said, 'You're the one to write the song. I want you to put music and melody to these words,' and so I pulled as much as I could from it and tried to turn it around and what we ended up with is 'I Remember Me,' which is the name of her album."
• Hudson explained the album title to Entertainment Weekly: "I named it I Remember Me because I feel like in 29 years I have lead over four different lives," she said. "And the album is helping to remember the old stuff and celebrate the new. It is a disc of everything I've been through. I don't have much from my old stuff to grasp at, so the only way I remember me is from my voice or the scar on my hand. That's a part of me an I want to remember it all, every minute."
• Hudson told PopEater how writing this song gave her an opportunity to express her feelings about the tragedy she'd endured: "Sometimes I find it difficult to express [myself] and that's where it came from with 'I Remember Me,' it was the best way for me to be able to put myself out there as far as my emotions, my thoughts and where I feel like I am in life right now. Because a lot of people ask like, 'How does she feel about this?' and they want to know what's in my head and that was the best way I could put it into words. So, again, that's another reason why the song is so close to me, it's like telling my story."