Brandi Carlile photographed by Collier Schorr When it comes to most things in life, Brandi Carlile does not mess about. She is steadfast, dedicated and true. And when it comes to Christmas, Brandi does not fuck around. “Oh my god, Cate, my Christmas fixation is another level. Like, I probably need help for it.” Our Zoom call starts only an hour after my own Christmas tree – roughly 3.5 feet tall – is delivered to my flat. With zero lights and zero decorations, it’s giving... Charlie Brown. Brandi immediately spots it over my shoulder and kindly says she likes my tree the minute our call begins, which is generous, considering what it actually looks like. I ask her how her light-hanging situation is going – which began earlier than most. “I’ve got maybe 30,000 lights on every single outbuilding, every roofline, every window, the whole house is covered in lights. And then I’ve got Christmas trees everywhere. It’s crazy. We make a big deal out of it.” Despite my job title, speaking directly to an artist that I admire as much as Brandi Carlile is actually a very rare opportunity. Her music, the way she moves through the world, her writing, her philanthropy, her intergenerational mentorship of other artists… there is a lot to be struck by. It was the way Brandi wrote about her relationship with music and creativity in her 2021 memoir Broken Horses , that had a profound, personal impact on me. I actually first got into Brandi’s music by way of listening to to her audiobook – which then set off a chain reaction within my own life. But b efore I (perhaps embarrassingly) tell her this, we’re discussing what Brandi is currently up to, rather than just the mad Christmas prep. She’s been knee-deep in the promotion cycle of Returning To Myself , her critically-acclaimed and chart-topping album – and preparing for her tour, and most importantly her Girls Just Wanna Weekend annual festival in Mexico this coming weekend, which features The Chicks. No big deal. “Everything’s feeling really musical right now,” she says. Returning To Myself is an extremely personal and vulnerable album. It feels like people say this quite regularly – but with Brandi, it’s true. I asked her how it’s felt talking about this showcase of vulnerability so much throughout its promotion cycle. “At 44, it’s hard for anything to feel new. You know, one of the reasons why I like to go over to the UK and Europe and go on tour is that it makes me feel discovered again or like new in some way. That there’s like a clean slate. And making my quote-unquote ‘vulnerable album’ – and everybody has one, and there won’t be another one – this is the one in my career that is like this. ″[This album] is something that I did backwards of how I’ve done everything else in my life. W henever we’ve written songs as a band, we do all of the construction of that song before we record it. And in this case, we didn’t. I wrote and recorded these songs and now I’m about to go with my band and start constructing them or reconstructing from the record. So, in a way, I need projects. I need big things in front of me now that the Christmas lights are done. And I can’t wait to get into the kind of details of these songs with Tim and Phil [Hanseroth , Brandi’s long-time collaborators and band members] and the rest of our band and start constructing a show, you know? That’s, that is my kind of core passion right now.” “Like most things, it’s happened to me after 40. And I can’t tell you how much I love that. I can’t tell you how much I love that I’m not 26.” Brandi’s next tour kicks off with a series of US shows in February, including two nights at Madison Square Garden, and comes over to Europe and the UK again in October, opening with a show in Dublin. I first saw Brandi Carlile in concert back in June 2024, at the Drury Lane Theatre in London – a smaller, much more intimate venue than, say, the Royal Albert Hall. It was her first show in London after the pandemic and her Grammy wins for In These Silent Days, and in short, it was a big moment. It was the first time her community of fans had been all together like that in years. The set had many acoustic numbers, and sounded more like the In The Canyon Haze version of In These Silent Days. She covered Linda Rondstat’s Long Long Time. For her encore, she appeared on a balcony playing with the Hanseroth twins singing Cannonball. Her wife Catherine joined her onstage. The night was incredibly special – you could see and feel from Brandi what the show, and her return to the UK, must have meant to her and Catherine. I’m not a religious person – but I believe in the magic of music, and what happens in a room when live music is playing for people who all feel and experience it at the same time. That night with Brandi on stage truly felt like a god-like, ethereal experience. She was in the moment, every step of the way, and her fans were right there along with her. As were the incredible musicians on stage with her, including the incomparable SistaStrings . “I think I felt discovered,” Brandi says when I ask how she felt about that show. “I sort of thought, ‘Well, there, I have a future here.’ I’m going to come back here now, again and again and again and this is going to be a place, you know, for me and for my music. “I sort of have felt that way before, like, and honestly, I’ve had some amazing moments particularly in London where I have thought that. But that was a turning point for me. And, I always wanted to play Royal Albert Hall, like always wanted to, but I didn’t think I could fill it on my own. So, like, I wanted to come and do Joni [Mitchell’s] Blue at Royal Albert, thinking maybe that would be my like inroad to Royal Albert Hall would be doing Blue. So, after Drury Lane, I just, I got the hint. I was like, ‘OK, there’s a time for me here’. “And like most things, it’s happened to me after 40. And I can’t tell you how much I love that. I can’t tell you how much I love that I’m not 26 when I’m experiencing these moments, because I know how sacred they are and how rare they are.” Brandie Carlile performs at the Royal Albert Hall If you’re a fan of music documentaries and musical memoirs like I am – you’ll be familiar with how the weight of certain venues, like Wembley and the Royal Albert Hall, can crush a musician’s enjoyment of performing there. I asked Brandi if she felt that lofty weight of Royal Albert Hall when she played there this past June, because it certainly didn’t let on in her performance. “If I’m honest, I was a bit, a bit crushed by it,” she says. “I wish I had had two nights or that, yeah, I had done four or five nights before it because I did my best, but I was very... I guess somewhere between intimidated and reverent, you know, to the point where it was actually hard to stay focused and stay on my feet with the importance of that show to me.” ″...him seeing what I do because of him was a big, existential mind-fuck of a moment.” Her show at the Royal Albert Hall was immense. I was there, softly weeping throughout most of it, and have such visceral memories of watching her tear the shit out a guitar solo alongside the Hanseroth twins – of watching her step up on an amp, and turn her face up to the spotlight and sing with everything she had – while knowing full well, Sir Elton John is watching her from a box, right across from the stage. “That was a big part of it. Since I was like 12 years old I’ve wanted to come to England and play Royal Albert Hall because that’s where Elton John is from. And then here I am at Royal Albert Hall and I’m playing in front of Elton. And, by the way, for the first time. He had never seen me, seen a Brandi Carlile show before. So, we had made an album and we had collaborated, gone on holiday together, but him seeing what I do because of him was a big, existential mind-fuck of a moment.” Elton John – the man and the music – has had a profound impact on Brandi’s life and career – which is why it’s so magical that they made the Grammy-nominated album Who Believes In Angels together. In addition to Elton, Brandi has also collaborated and performed with some of the biggest names out there, including Joni Mitchell. I tell her I have no idea how she works with these people without passing out or dying. “In retrospect, I don’t either. I go into some mode that I often say is like a trance, it’s almost like I lose a layer of intelligence or something where, I go into this sort of mode of where life is without consequence and I’m just like on adrenaline and I do it, I do my thing... “There’s things I did that I can’t imagine doing now. Like the Joni show in front of Joni. And I don’t know how or why or who that was that did that. Like I don’t know, because I don’t feel like I could do it right now.” Joni Mitchell, left, and Brandi Carlile perform "Both Sides Now" during the 66th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) In 2021, Brandi performed the complex, vocal challenge that is Joni Mitchell’s Blue album in its entirety. Both Joni and Elton John came to watch her do this. (Again, no big deal.) If you’ve ever tried to sing along to a sing one of these songs in the car, you know how tough they are, so imagine singing these in front of the person who wrote and performed them? Brandi has since gone on to become a close friend of Joni’s – and helped get her back into performing again. Incredibly, so much of this unfolded because Brandi simply spotted Joni at a Grammys event, and had the courage to walk up to her. “I just think that whatever that, you know, inhibition is, whatever that thing that that keeps people from doing the thing, most people don’t. So most people wouldn’t walk up to Joni and, you know, I just got down on my knees. She was in a chair and I just was like, shooting my shot. Most people just wouldn’t do it. And so they wouldn’t know that actually she’s fucking fun and funny and light and and just, you know. So, yeah, I get it. I get it. I do.” On top of her incredible work as a guitarist, pianist, producer, songwriter, collaborator, etc, etc – let’s not forget that Brandi is an incredible singer. Which, of course, takes a lot of upkeep and conscious, if not borderline tedious work – she explained to me how she works with a vocal trainer and has to “be really careful about how I take care of my voice”. I, as a very amateur singer in a middle-aged cover band, am very impressed by all of this and refer to her as basically being a vocal athlete, and that the up-keep must get so boring. She laughs and agrees, but says, “But the results aren’t boring. You know, if I get on stage in an arena and I can hit the back of the wall with my voice, that’s a win.” And speaking of “wins” – there’s a big, high note at the end of one of Brandi’s most beloved songs, The Joke, that she belts at full voice at the end. It’s the kind of note that sends chills down your spine, or, like me – tears streaming down your face. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to hit, so much so that there’s an entire section in Brandi’s memoir about it, and the journey she had to go on to be able to hit it while performing the song at the Grammy’s in 2019. Having seen her live twice now, it would appear that since the song’s initial release, nailing that note has got easier. And it was certainly the case watching her perform it in the BBC’s iconic Piano Room . I ask her if this is actually the case. “It’s really hard. It’s really hard. And that note never gets easier. And for, it’s a, it’s the note, the note that is on the break in my voice before it needs to go into head voice. Yeah. You know, so it’s, it’s the, I guess the vocal teacher calls it a mix, right? It’s, it’s that note. It’s in everything. It’s in The Story. It’s in The Joke. It’s in Right on Time. And now it’s, it’s in Human. “And I have put it in all four of those songs without knowing why. And it’s, it’s not a half step of it. It’s not a half step above it. It’s that same note every time. So in every song that I think is special, I put a terrifying note in it. And it’s the same one every time. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do it. I always find out after, right? I get on the phone with RAab [ Robert RAab Stevenson] and I go, ‘How do I hit that?’ It’s like, it’s hard. And he’s like, ‘That’s that damn note.’ You know, ‘why do you do this?’ “I don’t know. It’s something where my subconscious is like, ‘This song’s important, so you have to take your big risk in it’.” Outside of, but not unconnected to her own music, Brandi is a steadfast supporter of several other artists music – whether that’s from a collaboration, production, writing or singing standpoint. From Tanya Tucker and Miley Cyrus, to Elton and Joni Mitchell, to younger artists like Tish Melton and Audrey McGraw, Carlile has thrown herself into creative projects with so many other artists in different capacities and forms. Creative projects always come with the risk of emotional turmoil and mental pressure – and collaborating and working with someone you idolise as much as Brandi loves and respects Joni Mitchell was quite the undertaking. I gently ask if taking on so many collaborative projects ever leaves her feeling emotionally or creatively drained. “Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think your own energy and creativity need to be drained sometimes, just like a stopped drain. Like, so I think instinctually I look for those kinds of partnerships and collaborations when I know that my soul needs them. And so I’m up for it. I’m up to be drained and and or I wouldn’t say drained per se. That can be what happens, but it’s not my goal. Like, I’m up, I’m up for some pouring of myself into another person and being willing to be sort of poured into in a way, too. “Like, if you watch the Tanya documentary , one of my favourite moments is when we’re at the Bridgestone Arena and she’s the fucking child star again. She’s switched back on. I’m terrified. And then suddenly she’s my person, you know, calling the baby girl and shit. And it’s like that is how it goes. That is how it goes, you know. That is how, that is how these partnerships go. They do give both ways. “So, and there’s a part of me that still really needs that. You know what I mean? It’s always going to be looking for, for, um, those kinds of allies, especially around the parental age, you know. So, I know it’s important for me to do it or I wouldn’t be so inclined. I, I believe I have enough faith to know that whatever I want to do is what I should be doing. If it drains me, maybe I could use a bit of draining.” Aaron Dessner of The National performs during Bourbon and Beyond music festival on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. I tell Brandi that when I heard she was collaborating with Aaron Dessner , I knew I was going to cry my way through most of this album. Dessner is a founding member of The National, a producer and co-writer on Taylor Swift’s Evermore, Folklore and The Tortured Poet’s Department albums, as well as Ed Sheeran’s Subtract, plus countless other collaborations. And his style of collaboration, and how he worked with Brandi to bring Returning To Myself into fruition, was a very new experience for her. Brandi arrived at Long Pond in New York – not even knowing what exactly or where exactly she was – the day after completing her two night run at The Hollywood Bowl with Joni Mitchell. She says arriving at Dessner’s property “was like going from a place where I had huge, huge feelings – to a place where no feelings were required of me.” “Through no fault of Joni’s own, I just had really big feelings about the end of that journey,” Brandi explains that her “social batteries “were just “empty” by this point. “I couldn’t believe I had made the commitment to go out there and do this and meet a new person [Dessner] because like who knew what that person was going to be like, you know? And then when I got there, he was just so pure and quiet… It was not important to him whether I wrote a song that day or the next day or ever at all. He was just happy to have coffee with and meet a new person. There just was nothing required of me, not even to, to like feed myself. And it was like that was what, what the polar opposite of those of the previous interaction was… “I just was like, at one point I felt the weight of the world was on my shoulders because I had these two Hollywood Bowl shows. I have everyone from Elton John to Meryl Streep to Annie Lennox, at what I knew was going to be the final swan song of Joni Mitchell. “And that pressure, it was insane, it was like a skyscraper. And I didn’t even realise what it was doing to me. Nobody was doing it to me. I, the situation was doing it to me. And when it lifted, I was like, I didn’t want it to be lifted. It was like I was being exposed to the light or something for the first time. I hated it. I hated the separation, the aloneness. I hated the end. I hated that the pressure was over. “And then I landed in this barn in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t know exactly that. I didn’t know. And it all, everything just got very simple. And, um, I didn’t think I was going to go there and make an album. That’s for damn sure. Yeah. If anything, I thought we were going to write a song for someone else or something, right? [That] it was beginning of another friendship like me and Marcus [Mumford], you know? Like, ‘oh, let’s write a song for someone’. “But it, it wasn’t like that. It’s not how it turned out. And I like those things. They really surprise you right when you least expect it. When something is as least convenient it could be, that’s when it happens.” “When you’re looking for signs, you see them.” I agree with Brandi wholeheartedly that, sometimes, the most magical things can happen in your life when it’s also the least convenient timing imaginable. Brandi had recently shared a clip of Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, walking into the studio to work on the song A War With Time with Brandi – but wearing a Wrecking Ball t-shirt. Wrecking Ball being the iconic Emmylou Harris album, which was an inspirational reference point for Brandi in the making of Returning To Myself – but a reference that Vernon had no idea of. “I feel like a lot of that sort of stuff happens to you a lot.” I tell her. Brandi smiles and nods, “Yeah, it does. When you’re looking for signs, you see them.” 2026 is going to be another banger of a year for Brandi Carlile. She says that right now a big focus for her is her Girls Just Wanna weekend festival, as she said “the festival with birth the tour” and that between a festival and a tour “those things are enough for anyone!” But, while it’s a lot of work, she has a plan. “ Right before I do the whole thing, you know, I’ll just to go and fill up. I’ll pop down to LA and I’ll go and I’ll spend my couple of hours with Joni. That’s what, that’s what’s, that’s what does everything for me. It just gives me like a total film moment because especially now that the journey of these shows making these events happen is over and she’s painting again. We just have the best time together.” I point out how mad her life would be, and how different it is now, if she had never “had the balls” to do that Blue performance, or even go up to Joni and introduce herself. “Oh my god. What was that? What was that?” I reply that it was “magic” and she agrees. She tells me I “would have loved those” shows, and I tell her there wouldn’t have been enough Kleenex in the entire world to mop up my tears if I got to experience that. “ You never know,” she says, “it could come around to where it’s important to do it again...You know what would be good to do? It would be somewhere cool in Canada. Because Canada deserves to see Blue….And maybe the Sydney Opera House because I never played the Sydney Opera House and I can’t imagine any other way to play it. So that would make sense to go there and do Blue.” So, who do we need to petition to get Brandi playing the Sydney Opera House!? In the days after we speak, Brandi pops up on stage with Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran . Her incredible Tiny Desk performance was also published. Her Girls Just Wanna Weekend kicks off today, 15 January, and her tour on 10 February. Nothing is slowing down for Brandi Carlile, and it simply shouldn’t – other than when she needs a rest, needs to fish, or string up some Christmas lights. In a world full of over-thinkers and those who are too afraid to speak up – it’s hard to listen Brandi and not be inspired by the way she simply leans in to these moments of opportunity – both simplistic and spectacular – with grace, gumption, and ease. So, maybe, make like Brandi – shoot your shot and let the magic unfold. Especially if you’re over 40. Brandi Carlile 2026 UK Tour Dates Related... Watch Pink And Brandi Carlile Pay Tribute To Sinéad O'Connor With Breathtaking Duet