Brandi Carlile was just 25 years old when she released her sophomore album "The Story" in 2007. But even then, it was clear that the singer-songwriter had an old soul and an ear for the timeless, with gorgeous songs that artfully captured the divine ache of love and loneliness, the pain of loss, and the faith it takes to keep going. Since then, her sound and stories have resonated with a wide audience: Several of Carlile’s tracks have appeared on "Grey’s Anatomy," including its musical episode, and she can count former President Barack Obama as a fan.
More than 10 years later, Carlile has made an album in response to this particular political moment with the same care and insight. "By the Way, I Forgive You," released today, is a surge of heart-cracking orchestral swells, ceiling-shattering vocals, and tales of some of the most vulnerable in our society. The album’s lead single, "The Joke," is an open affirmation for anyone — but especially kids — who feel persecuted. Its second single, "The Mother," is a tender, honest confessional from a mom to and about her daughter. On the latter, Carlile distills motherhood into widely relatable vignettes — messy cars, missing plans with friends, catastrophic joy — and also offers an essential look into queer parenthood by reminding us that for queer people, parenting itself is a political act ("The world has stood against us / Made us mean to fight for you," she sings).
But "By the Way, I Forgive You" is more than a purely of-the-moment, political earpiece — and to only treat it as such is to miss its parallel current: compassion. The album is an artful dose of empathy for self and others, and both a call to action — the third song on the album is titled "Hold Out Your Hand" — and a subtle conditioning to break down the boxes into which we write people off: "He found a bad habit he couldn't break... / What in the hell are you gonna do / When the world has made its mind up about you," Carlile sings about an addict on "Sugartooth."
For many, art is inherently political, and Carlile’s activism has always been intertwined with her music, if not explicit in her lyrics. All proceeds from her 2017 album — a collection of "The Story" covers by Adele, Dolly Parton, and more — benefitted the charity War Child UK. Earlier this year, she toured with folk legends, including Emmylou Harris and Joan Baez, to raise funds for Jesuit Refugee Service. And Carlile’s own Looking Out Foundation, established 10 years ago with longtime bandmates and collaborators Phil and Tim Hanseroth, has directed money from donors and concert ticket sales to organizations for women, disadvantaged youth, and the homeless.
Family, empathy, holding a hand out to others — these are the things on Carlile's mind, and "By the Way, I Forgive You" is an aural realization of her ruminations. Before taking the stage at one of her stops on tour, Carlile spoke to Shondaland.com about the fear and ecstasy of being a gay mom, the soul that drives her songwriting, and the opportunity for connection that is art.
This album is more politically explicit than your earlier music, but you’ve been an activist for years. What was it about this moment that made you decide to more openly incorporate politics into your songwriting?
I think politics are affecting people more emotionally than they ever have. And I think it has to do less with politics and more with things that we are politicizing in this country. We should not be politicizing children, we should not be politicizing refugees, we should not be politicizing all of these loaded, dignified, private, and compassion-based issues, because it’s just dehumanizing to people. It should never be up for debate whether or not we are going to welcome children that are experiencing conflict abroad.
You raised money for children displaced by war through your partnership with War Child UK and performances for Jesuit Refugee Service. How did having a child of your own influence your advocacy work?
I think we all think that we’re really empathetic and compassionate people, and we probably are. And then the moment you have a child, shit gets real, you know? You start realizing that there’s no such thing as just a junkie, there’s no such thing as just an immigrant, there’s no such thing as a casualty. Everybody is somebody’s baby, and that is a trembling and powerful thing. So that’s definitely made me feel really serious about protecting children and babies. But also moms and dads and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. There’s a line of compassion that seems to have been cut by recent events, and I just want to try to be a reminder of that in some way.
Was that part of the reason you decided to record "The Mother" now? You’ve been playing it live for awhile.
It was one of those things that I just felt like I needed to start singing to myself every night [laughs] — to help me learn and evolve in my role [as a mother]. And it certainly did. It took me a couple of months to get through it without getting choked up on the last verse, and whenever [my daughter] Evangeline’s not with me, it still happens to me, which makes me feel good because it’s still fresh in that way.
One thing I love about the song is that it gets at the ambivalence about motherhood that many people probably feel, but never talk about. Did you always want to have a child?
[Yes], and when I turned 30, it got super intense. I thought I was gonna be carrying, and when that ended up not being the case, it was a whole different set of surprises and curveballs and things to learn from. And it’s been really quite the journey as a mom, but also a journey as a gay mom, specifically, because there are some really serious differences that I wasn’t quite prepared for. I didn’t have adequate mirroring. All of my templates and paradigms for family and domesticity and parenting are heterosexual paradigms. So when I wrote "The Mother," I had that in mind a lot, about how maybe somebody gay would hear that, [while] getting ready to experience what I experienced. It’s different, I think, to have kids when you’re gay. We’re always gonna be a little bit different. And there is an emotional reconciliation that comes with being a woman that didn’t carry your own child, whether you’re gay or straight. It’s a complicated thing, and a beautiful thing, and something worth writing about and something worth listening to.
And there’s also a reconciliation with the mere possibility of this kind of love, love for someone whose existence might not have even seemed possible at one point.
Absolutely. I needed to be told, or I needed to be reassured, that it was natural to feel hesitation, nervousness, fear that I wouldn’t make a connection, fear that I wasn’t maternal. And as [those connections] developed and as I earned my love for Evangeline, I realized that there are other people, other mothers feeling that way. The love that I feel for Evangeline is insane. It’s intense, it keeps me up at night. But it wasn’t innate, it wasn’t immediate, and it was hard to learn.
What kind of feedback have you gotten about the song?
I’m getting all kinds of different perspectives on the song, which thrills me beyond explanation. It’s like Joni Mitchell said, "If you see me in my song, I’m not doing my job, but if you see yourself, then I’ve accomplished something." [Ed. note: The exact quote is, "If you listen to that music and you see me, you're not getting anything out of it. If you listen to that music and you see yourself … now you're getting something out of it."] And if it was only queer moms that related to "The Mother," I would be happy, but it’s not — it’s dads, and it’s straight moms, and it’s aunts and uncles, and it’s daughters and sons. At the end of the day, that’s what you want. You want a song to feel like a cloak that you can take off yourself and wrap around someone else.
What does Evangeline think of it?
She loves it. She said to me, "Mom, who’s the lady that trashed your car?" [laughs] And I’m like, "That would be you, punk." And she’s like, "I didn’t trash your car, you’re not talking about me in that verse, you’re saying she." And I was like, "Yeah, I’m talking about you."
You’ve had a busy few years, as a parent, artist, and activist. Where do you see yourself focusing most of your energy next?
I’m pretty happy on the trajectory that I’m on, which is that I’ve got a pretty equal delineation in my life of the things that are really important: my family — which includes the twins [longtime collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth] — my activism and faith, which are unbreakable and one in the same, and my music. It all ties together. I really want it to be fully integrated by the time I turn 40. That was my goal, to kind of overcome my Gemini-ness and not keep my family separate from my career, and not keep my faith separate from my career — integrate all of those things and try to be a whole person. A whole, clumsy, naive person.
Do you feel like you’re close to accomplishing that?
I’m headed there. I’ve got a few more years, but I’m gonna keep working on it. You always struggle with the temptation as an artist to isolate yourself, because it’s dark, and it’s easy, especially when distance is involved. It’s really easy to get in your head and get dark and get that wanderlust, have it take over. But I’m honestly not inspired by that anymore.
What does inspire you?
Mysticism and humanness and how they intersect. How we cope with the fact that we’re all gonna lose our parents. How we cope with the insane fear that comes with parenthood. How we cope with trying to exist in the world in [this] political climate. Things that I wrote about, the things that are happening. How we put people in boxes and write them off as junkies, incarcerate people. Those kinds of things interest me a lot more than getting all in my head about somebody that I have a crush on.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
