Brandi Carlile Offers a Track-by-Track Look at ‘Returning to Myself’

Brandi Carlile‘s “Returning to Myself” album, her first solo release in four years, is likely to debut in the top 10 when album chart results come in this weekend. Her appearance on “Saturday Night Live” will likely draw even more listeners to the well-reviewed album. As her fans already know, the material runs a little deeper than some of the pop company it’s maintaining, and there are fascinating insights to be gleaned from or about every track on the project, which is why (as a bonus to our already-published interview with Carlile) we’re providing this track-by-track information that has the singer-songwriter speaking about each of its 10 tunes.

In this detailed commentary, Carlile talks about working with fellow writer-producers Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner, Justin Vernon and the Hanseroth twins, with detours to explore pertinent interactions with Joni Mitchell (topic of the track “Joni”) and Elton John (who launched a separate duo project with Carlile earlier this yr). She goes additional into the album’s themes of how we preserve sight of affection, mortality and the larger image amid the temptation to just doomscroll by way of troubled instances. She zeroes in on, among other songs, the explosive rocker “Church & State,” which is bound to be an “SNL” highlight this weekend. (The following commentary was collated from Variety‘s interviews with Carlile about the project in addition to track introductions she gave during an album listening event in Nashville.)

1. “Returning to Myself”

The title track, though not the first full quantity written for the album, has the first lyric Carlile wrote for it. The day after doing the second of two reveals with Joni Mitchell at the Hollywood Bowl in October 2024, she flew to Aaron Dessner’s dwelling again east for a co-writing session that had been advised by Jody Gerson. After she arrived that evening and located herself alone in a bed room in his barn, she wrote these lyrics as a poem, reflecting on her intention to separate herself from Mitchell professionally for a while and spend time on her personal.

Carlile: “This was my North Star for what grew to become this album in a actually transitional interval in a 40-something-year-old girl’s life… I acquired to Aaron’s place and he was there with this wonderful lady, Bella, an engineer that he works with, and I sat down on the sofa and told ’em what I had achieved the day before. I began to really feel actually emotional about it. Then he was like, ‘Well, it’s getting late. I’m gonna head off to mattress. There’s a blueberry muffin in the kitchen.’ Then he left, and I used to be just alone in this barn. I went upstairs and I picked a bed room in the loft to sleep in, and I sat down on the mattress. I still had a literal hangover, and was having an existential disaster once I wrote the lyrics to ‘Returning to Myself’ as a poem.

“It’s like [in the opening lines], first of all, who’s God? Is God this reckless, leather-jacket-wearing, menacing, James Dean-looking man just sitting there holding your life between their fingers on fireplace, and watching it burn down like a matchstick, watching you squirm? Or, are we universally and unconditionally liked? And then, what are we right here to study? Are we actually right here with all these other people to learn the way to exist in solitude and be alone? Is that what it means to be developed? Is that the point?

“I’m in a generation that is fixated on self — self-preservation, self-care, self-exploration. And I’m antithetical to that, I think to a fault, a bit. That’s not to say that I’m not selfish in my own ways, or at least misguidedly self-important at times. But I don’t know if the journey inward is really the point. I don’t know if that’s really the way to self-discovery. I think who you are in the context of who you love is probably the journey. And that’s kind of what I’m asking myself — because I don’t want to have a made-up mind. I don’t want to be atrophied in my thinking at 45; I want to still be growing and evolving. So, is it necessary for me to take the journey inward? And I think that’s what I did when I made this album. I got it out of my system… I did it, and yeah, and I think I still stand by a preference for connection.”

2. “Human”

The second track on the album was written the evening before the 2024 election, specializing in the values that are most important to have in mind in troubled instances, in a brief lifetime on earth — versus doomscrolling. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon is among the contributors.

Carlile: “I had this Emmylou Harris ‘Wrecking Ball’ factor in my thoughts the complete time I’m making the album — not to be by-product of it, just to preserve it as a religious North Star in my soul. Justin Vernon will get invited by Aaron to the studio. I completely idolize Justin Vernon. He doesn’t know something about this, because a lot of this I’ve saved to myself and/or the twins now. And Justin turns up with a six-pack of beer sporting an Emmylou Harris ‘Wrecking Ball’ T-shirt. And we made this track, co-produced by Justin Vernonwith a lot of musical touches from him too.

“Phil got here up with the melody to the refrain of ‘Human.’ Phil wrote ‘The Story.’ We name him ‘Bitch Lips’ because he’s acquired lovely lips and he’s always carrying round a stick of Chapstick. But also, he writes lady melodies. Sometimes he doesn’t even do lyrics. He just sends me a little demo and that’s how he presents melody to me. They don’t always settle in instantly, however ultimately once I determine out what it’s that I need to say, I discover that lady melody that Phil despatched me and it turns into a energy ballad, and that’s what ‘Human’ was.

“’Human’ is about striking a really difficult balance, first recognizing that we’re here for a very short period of time, like the blink of an eye, and that we have got to find a way to be happy in the chaos. We have to find a way for all to be well with our soul while we’re here in this split second. And then we also have to find a way to not be apathetic, inactive, passive and neoliberal about the things that are happening in our world. That is a really difficult balance to strike because one could accidentally block out the things that need work and the things that need activism in order to make themselves happy. Or one could accidentally block out the need to be human, while they are virtue-signaling and running as fast as they can on a treadmill that’s outpacing them. And that balance is the challenge that I’m putting forward with this.”

3. “A Woman Oversees”

One of the most private and unresolved songs on the album, about a relationship that, in the second at least, has Carlile oversharing and the other individual undersharing. It’s also one in every of the most Joni-esque songs on the album.

Carlile: “It is a freak second that I don’t suppose ever would’ve made it on any of our other albums because someone occurred to hit file while I used to be writing one thing alongside the street. I sat down and I wrote this track stream-of-consciousness, didn’t even know if it will rhyme, and it’s one in every of my favourite songs on the file. … I feel it’s loopy to put it up in the entrance 5 songs. But I can’t wait to do it live with SistaStrings.

“Communication may by chance be a one-way factor, because is fascinating, and people love being requested about themselves. I read just lately that a human being’s favourite sound is the sound of their identify. And we are able to’t even assist that. That’s just the case, which suggests that we love to be requested about ourselves, and if we’re not cautious, we could also be trying again on two hours and realizing that we didn’t ask any questions again. That may both be because we’re being a narcissist in that second, or it might be because we’re being kind of mined, or being requested to carry the interplay because there’s one thing about the other individual in the precise interplay the place they received’t present up and reveal themselves.

“There’s a nobility in (asking prying questions), because it’s a beautiful thing to ask people questions and be interested in who they are and what they think, but then you have to give something of yourself so that that person doesn’t leave that interaction and spiral, you know? That’s what happens when you’ve been asked questions all night and you’ve gone there and you’re talking about your divorce and you’re having to cry, and then you’re in the the cab on the way home and you’re like, ‘I just cried for two hours, and did I say too much? Did I overshare?’ That other person owes it to you to show up in the conversation with themselves a little bit too. That’s why it’s spelled ‘overSEES,’ because it is pretty dominant, to not be vulnerable when you’re asking someone else to.”

4. “A War With Time”

This is the collaboration with Aaron Dessner on the album that comes closest to echoing the sorts of collabs he has had with artists like Taylor Swift, the place nearly the whole lot about the music mattress is his, even if nothing above it’s.

Carlile: “After I positioned the blueberry muffin (the first evening at his compound) and I went to mattress and wrote the poem ‘Returning to Myself,’ I awoke the next morning and got here downstairs and realized what it’s to write with Aaron Dessner… Aaron’s a man of few phrases, and he doesn’t take up any emotional house (in the track), which suggests that uncomfortably, the artist has a lot of room to have a lot of big emotions because his aren’t actually there in a intentional manner.

“I didn’t know what Long Pond was, either. I thought Long Pond was the name of the town. Everybody kept asking me where I was, and I was like, ‘I was upstate in New York in a town called Long Pond.” I didn’t know! And so once I acquired up there, he was like, ‘Well, the way I do it is, I’ve acquired these items, and it’s not to say they’re completed — like, you could possibly add to ’em if you need, or take away from ’em — however actually they’re sort of a piece. And then for those who can and it evokes you, you’ll sing over it.’

“It’s a cool manner to co-write, and I’d never heard of it before because I haven’t achieved any co-writes in my life. It’s just sort of been me and the twins, and a couple of random issues right here and there for a project, however for the most half, no. ,,, And I’m a producer and I’m a very controlling individual; ask my spouse — a self-controlling individual. At first, I used to be stunned about not having the ability to change something in the track — you realize, chord buildings or textures I’ll not like, or a guitar tone that I feel ought to be different. But he’s sort of unapologetic about the fact that it’s just achieved. It evokes you and also you’ll write to it otherwise you received’t. So for those who do, you’re not just writing, however you’re committing to Aaron Dessner as a producer, which is fairly fucking cool and confident. And it freed me up. It just blew my chest open because I used to be like: I don’t have to suppose about this. I’m both gonna be impressed by this piece of music or I’m not.

“And this piece that he performed me was extremely inspiring. When I heard it. I heard Bruce Hornsby, ‘That’s Just the Way It Is.’ I heard Mike and the Mechanics, ‘The Living Years.’ I heard Marc Cohn’s ‘Walking in Memphis.’ I heard my youthful years, the years the place I wasn’t considering about verse/refrain construction, the place I wasn’t considering about what was cool. I used to be just considering about what made me cry.

“It was so strange to not worry about production and to not worry about creation — that it was either gonna come or it wasn’t. And then when it’s done, it’s kind of done. And ‘A War With Time’ and ‘No One Knows Us’ were both really like that.”

5. “Anniversary”

One of the album’s more enigmatic songs explores the concept of some kind of anniversary date looming as important every yr — for better or, seemingly, for worse — and then transferring past the commemoration of that date carrying any undue weight.

“I was alone up there (at Dessner’s Long Pond complex). This was a strange idea that came to me in the middle of the night… When I played the idea for this for Aaron, he declined to help me with it. He just said, ‘How about I just play guitar and let’s just see how you feel when you sing it.’ And I haven’t really experienced that before. And I wound up feeling really subconscious singing a song in front of a guy I didn’t really know. But I thought of my love of Elliott Smith, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m embarrassed, so I’m gonna double my vocal.’ Well, it turns out you can’t hide even then.”

6. “Church & State”

By far the most out-and-out rocker on the album, with a determined U2 affect. It’s also simply the most topical track, as the title would point out — a assertion of anger amid a file that in any other case tends towards making peace, with oneself if not the world.

“I’m glad that track’s on there. We had a playback just lately, and proper before that track — I don’t know the way to really feel about this — I heard a girl lean over and say to her neighbor, ‘She’s not wailing.’ I don’t know if she was complaining or if it was a praise, however I used to be like, wait until we get to ‘Church & State.’

“One of my top 5 favourite albums of all time rising up was ‘The Joshua Tree.’ … I even entered a contest one time as Bono once I was 15 to win a singing competitors, singing ‘Running to Stand Still.’ I wore sun shades and shit and I fell on my knees at the end of it. I already had the lesbian haircut that he has, so it wasn’t a lot of a stretch. … So Daniel Lanois [who co-produced ‘Joshua Tree’ as well as ‘Wrecking Ball’] was on my thoughts a lot.

“I acquired a track from Tim a couple of years in the past, this lovely concept and riff and this drop-D and all of this cognitive dissonance in the track, and I sunk my tooth into it then. And I said, no matter that is, that’s a route for the place I really feel like we may go musically. And then I tucked it away in the again of my thoughts and forgot about it until Nov. 5 [the night of the 2024 presidential election]. We have been in the studio as a band, and it wasn’t an introspective evening. It was a evening the place I couldn’t keep off my telephone because I used to be watching myself get up to a realization about the nation that I lived in. And I used to be listening to ‘Bullet the Blue Sky,’ and I used to be leaning into my early years and just sort of amassing rage. And we made a burning, searing track that evening.

“I was reading a conversation on the First Amendment instead of a guitar solo. I love Andrew Watt so much. Every time we talk on the phone, he’s like, ‘I fucking love “Church & State,” because I really like whenever you read the Declaration of Independence.’… I really like Andrew Watt, man. It doesn’t matter the place he thought it got here from. He agreed with it, he believed in it and it actually excited him. He liked that a part of the track and he was so encouraging, and he was in the actual same place that we have been. He’s a particular spirit and he just sort of like morphed into our band in a manner that modified the whole lot.

“When the lyrics have been coming together for that track, I just couldn’t cease considering of the knowledge of Thomas Jefferson’s deal with to the Danbury Baptists. There’s a lot knowledge in the Constitution, and even the notations on the Constitution are full of knowledge — the footnotes, if you’ll. What he said to the Baptist was meant to reassure them that they’d be allowed to observe their religion, spirituality, faith, however you wanna refer to it, freely under the Constitution. But he also makes a actually important distinction that we aren’t an autocracy. We’re not a theocracy. We can’t rule over people with our interpretation of an especially opaque scripture and faith because it pertains significantly to the Christian faith. Bow that we’ve seen over time, um, the integration of so many lovely cultures and faiths in the United States, it’s, it’s a connotation that’s safekeeping for all people, because it permits for regulation to be secular correctly. So I discover that to be important and a life-giving a part of that textual content.

“And in my religion, even Jesus was clear about not ruling a people based on an interpretation of faith. Even Jesus said, ‘Give unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s.’ So I can’t get behind guidelines and legal guidelines that I do know are secretly based on an interpretation of a faith that I can’t get behind. Even if I agree with the faith.

“When we made that song, all of us together, that bass line, that guitar riff, so many parts of that song as they came together as these individual little parts… We don’t do that on our own. We just see each other. We just play together. There’s no such thing as Phil going, ‘Here’s my part,’ and Tim going, ‘Here’s my part.’ … It kind of sometimes winds up being a little bit of a sonic tornado, but Andrew had this idea for this separate guitar line, this separate bass line, and I think that’s where it kind of hit the U2 button for me. And Matt Chamberlain just endured with that crazy drum riff. That was an aerobic workout.”

7. “Joni”

A tribute to Joni Mitchell, in each lyrics and in the distinctly nontraditional however familiar-seeming music method. It presents Mitchell not as somebody who has been a shoulder for Carlile to cry on, essentially, however a therapeutic pressure together with her regular companionship, nonetheless.

Carlile: “Oh my God. If I turned up there crying, she would look at me like I had two heads. There’s no world the place I’m gonna go cry on Joni’s shoulder. But I’ve gone out there very, very pressured and sat across from her while she performs solitaire, and just listened to the tales. Because she tells tales, and the tales have decompressed my thoughts in instances that have been actually aggravating and upsetting instances for me, whether or not I used to be sharing that or not. And I think about that that’s what people have been doing of their bedrooms with Joni’s tales since the early ‘70s, and before. I just got to be a little closer up. But, you know, there’s therapeutic there and there’s soothing there. It’s just not in conventional sense that one would anticipate from a girl.

“This track is so sacred because my good 5 or 6 years with Joni are just so formative to who I’ve turn out to be. I just will never be the same individual or songwriter because of my time together with her. And I received’t even write a track anymore if I can’t drive up to that gate and stroll in that kitchen and play it for Joni — I received’t do it. Which means I write very few songs. But she’s just such a singular and highly effective girl, and he or she’s been such a pressure in my life without imposing something on me or asking for something.

“I wrote this song from such a pure place. I played her ‘Returning to Myself’ and played her ‘A Woman Oversees,’ which she loved. And then I played her ‘Joni,’ and I worked up to it because I was so nervous about it. … There’s a couple little references that I thought she’d like, but I didn’t know. Nobody knows with Joni. So I played this song and she was just listening to it with like a furrowed brow, and she was putting clips in her hair and just sort of like staring ahead and listening. And she wasn’t smiling for quite a long time. There’s that whole first verse about ‘laughing at the pop stars,’ and she doesn’t even crack a smile or make eye contact or say anything. Then it gets to that chorus where it says: ‘When I tell you “I love you,” and also you inform me, “Okay.”’ And she just began to chuckle — like, just straight out of nowhere, she full-on laughed — and then she goes, ‘You asshole!’ And I liked it, because I knew that she acquired all of those references, and it was just a actually, actually nice second. Then she requested at the end of the track, ‘Why do you think I’m a wild girl?’ And I acquired to clarify it to her. It’s not very often that she’ll sit there and allow you to actually give her a praise, however she requested, so I acquired to inform her why I feel she’s so wild.

“The first line of the track says, ‘I knew a wild woman who threw a party on her grave. She went there tapping her cane and sipping champagne’ — that’s some literal shit… She has a grave in Hollywood at that well-known cemetery, and her grave is just sitting there with a clean gravestone, and he or she goes there continuously with champagne and he or she has these little events, just her and a couple of mates, consuming sandwiches and just chilling out on her grave and making jokes… One day they just despatched me a image and I just thought, ‘What a cool fucking woman. She just laughs at mortality in every way.’

“Actually watching everyone strive to play to that guitar half was just hilarious, particularly Chad Smith — I imply, it’s nowhere close to strapped to time. It’s in complete outer house because I sang it and performed at the same time, they usually couldn’t be separated. I used to be hanging on for pricey life because I knew I couldn’t make a track called ‘Joni’ that had typical chord progressions in it. So I had to take my time, and at instances I rushed, out of the anxiousness of getting to the next chord. and so that you just wind up with this track that’s in complete free time. That was based on my ability, not based on any musical choice. And then everyone else having to really feel that free time and determine out the place I used to be gonna land was just sort of one in every of those lovely issues that can occur only in a studio.

“That’s Blake Mills playing fretless guitar and Mark Isham playing the tenor sax, which was part of the core of the Joni Jam band. … Those guys coming in and playing on that song feels more like something they did for her than something they did for me. I think that was them signing off on that song as a worthy tribute for Joni and joining it, I bet if I had sent them that song and they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t have played on it. They have such discernment and taste, just like Joni has.”

8. “You Without Me”

A young track about detaching a little from kids as they inevitably discover their very own identification. It first appeared, in similar kind, on the Elton John/Carlile collaborative album “Who Believes in Angels?,” which was recorded in late 2023 and launched in early 2025.

Carlile: “This is a track for anyone that has youngsters or nieces and nephews. There’s this second this transition interval. I feel we strive not to be narcissists. We strive not to project ourselves onto our kids. We inform ourselves that we all know we’re not elevating a Mini-Me, and that that’s not what’s important. But on some level, I feel we do suppose we’re elevating a Mini-Me until the second we all know we’re not. And that second is because they did one thing that went against your beliefs. Maybe they just broke a tiny rule. Maybe they took a stand. Maybe they wouldn’t include you someplace that you used to love to spend time at. And they stand on their very own two ft they usually use a different voice they usually make a different face. Maybe it’s one thing you witnessed from far-off, that it occurs with one in every of their mates. But that second of realizing that your youngster has departed you and turn out to be their very own individual is concurrently devastating and also makes you so proud at the same time. And it’s such a fucking twisted feeling that I, in fact, being the sick lesbian I’m, couldn’t assist however write a unhappy track about it.

“I wrote this song about my daughter the first time I saw that happen. And it’s on the album that I did with Elton, but Elton doesn’t believe it belongs there, and/or he believes it belongs somewhere else too. So he expressed a really strong opinion and told me that it belonged on this album, that it is actually part of this body. I think the exact thing he said was, ‘I will spank you if you don’t put it on.’ So I decided to honor his request because I don’t want to get spanked by Elton John.”

9. “No One Knows Us”

The singer reaches out to a good friend who could also be depressed, emphasizing the ongoing significance of their relationship, a bond distinctive among all the billions of other bonds in the universe.

Carlile: “It’s the second-to-last track and ought to be observe three. But I wished to put it close to the end of the file because it ought to be observe three, however I really like that it’s second-to-last. I’ve never liked an album in the manner I really like this one, and the sequence is so important to me. This is one in every of possibly only three or 4 songs on this album that are a jam.

“It began with a Brandi-and-Aaron second up at Long Pond, upstate of New York, and I called Aaron a couple weeks after we’d written it and I said, ‘You know what? I’m so sorry, but it surely’s a band track. Can we alter it?’ And he says, ‘Uh, uh, okay.’ ‘Can we fly to L.A. and play on it and then co-produce it with Andrew Watt and all get in the same room at Henson and totally change your piece of art?’ And the man was so beneficiant that he acquired on an airplane and got here to Los Angeles and he introduced Justin Vernon and him, they usually, Andrew and we and the band all acquired together like a band and we performed this track the manner that I used to be feeling it. I feel it’s a banger.

“In all honesty, if Aaron had his manner, he would strip the band off that track proper now, and it will just be the the preliminary factor that he and I wrote. And in fact, it’s so fucking cool, the preliminary factor, that I’ll ultimately release, because I need people to hear that too. It was actually, actually particular. But at the end of the day, the manner I really feel that track and the manner I need to do that track out in life is the way it sounds on the file. It’s sort of like, in my reveals, ‘Pride and Joy’ or ‘Give Up the Ghost.’ You know the way ‘Pride and Joy’ is an acoustic track on the album, however then live, it’s like a enormous Radiohead track?, I don’t remorse the manner I recorded ‘Pride and Joy’ on the album. But I knew that I used to be gonna flip round and make ‘No One Knows Us’ and do a huge rock ‘n’ roll second in my present, so I actually wished it to be that manner on the album. But yeah, Aaron, I feel if he had his manner, je would have it again down in the Long Pond world. So someday that will come out just like that. But Andrew’s contribution to that was bombastic and fucking rad.

“For reasons that are important to me, this song is about the keepers. This song is about the people in your life that are there forever. … It is one of those connections that the world would think is dysfunctional because you’re communicating through a shared experience and you’re saying ‘No one knows us but us.’ And it doesn’t matter if the world thinks that that’s dysfunctional or we’re too close or that we need fucking boundaries. It’s like: ‘Hey — can you get out of bed today, or do you need me?’ And I think really what matters is that the world is full of people that have that someone that sometimes it’s their job to get them out of bed. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no lack of boundaries in being that connected to someone that you are their person, sometimes.”

10. “A Long Goodbye”

She bookends this album-closer with some clearly autobiographical materials — referencing at the start her first aircraft journey with a girlfriend from Seattle to Idaho, as a younger grownup. But in-between come mentions of how simple it’s to slip off this mortal coil, context that brings more poignance to the embrace of mortality in the coda. Fans will discover that an Indigo Girls reference slips in as the track is reaching its touching end.

Carlile: “No one returns to themselves alone. It’s not doable. And the last track may have been the first track, and the first track may have been the last track, however I just couldn’t bear letting go of the great thing about an album that ends on the phrase goodbye — it’s on the nostril. But for those who may write a memoir in three and a half or 4 and a half minutes, it’d be this track.

“At the end, swirling moment that is a lightening up of my soul, and hopefully the person’s soul who’s listening to it. We talked about some heavy shit, but then you just sort of feel this lift come up: Let it go, keep it light, let it snow, let the wind blow. It’s only life after all, you know — it’s a long goodbye. It is supposed to just be that: lightening up.”