On May 19 2023 Brandy Clark released her new self-title album, Brandy Clark produced by Brandi Carlile. It features some familiar Brandi Carlile band members and friends too.
It was nominated for 5 Grammys (and won 1) in the 2024 awards, including:
GRAMMY©️ Nominations
Best Americana Performance
Brandy Clark ft. Brandi Carlile – Dear Insecurity
Best Americana Album
Brandy Clark – Brandy Clark
Best Country Song
Brandy Clark – “Buried”
Best Country Solo Performance
Brandy Clark – “Buried”
Best American Roots Song
Brandy Clark ft. Brandi Carlile – Dear Insecurity – WON
Dig reported that Special guests include “Derek Trucks and Lucius as well as Matt Chamberlain on drums, Sebastian Steinberg on bass, Dave Palmer on piano, Jedd Hughes on guitar, Kyleen King on viola, Josh Neumann on cello, Sista Strings (aka Monique and Chauntee Ross) on cello and violin, Steve Fishell on pedal steel and Jay Carlile on background vocals and harmonica.”
This album was destined to be. In 2021 Brandy and Brandi told Chris Willman from Variety:
“Is this a one-off, or two-off, or…? “Oh, I’m excited,” says Clark. “I hope we can do more, honestly.” Agrees Carlile: “We did it and I was like, oh, God, this worked really well. We really need to do this again. I’d love it if she gave me a shot at a whole album.”
So she did give Brandi Carlile a shot. The new album is produced by Brandi Carlile, and also features her vocal on the album (both credited and un-credited) including the duet – Dear Insecurity (feat. Brandi Carlile).
An experienced singer and songwriter based in Nashville (originally from the Pacific Northwest like Brandi Carlile), who has a penchant for funny and whimsicle lyrics, Brandy told Chris Willman (a huge fan of both artists) in Variety this album has both humor and a more serious side. “Truthfully, I love both things,” meaning meaning both humor-tinged and dramatic material, Clark says, “but if left to my own devices, I’d do an album full of ballads. I’m kind of melancholy that way, and I love that. Then on this record, working with Brandi Carlile, she sort of pushed me to go further into that — nothing too light.”
Brandy Clark and Brandi Carlile had previously worked together. Brandi Carlile produced the two tracks “Same Devil (ft Brandi Carlile), and Like Mine in 2021. Both songs were released as bonus tracks to the digital version only of her last album You’re Life is a Record from 2021. Brandi sings backing vocals on Like Mine (but doesn’t have a featured credit). She also appeared as a musical guest on the Brandi Carlile fan based (Bramily) show during the pandemic – Carlile Quarentine Compound shows. Brandy was also a credited writer on the Grammy nominated song Beautiful Noise, by Brandi Carlile and Alicia Keys.
(Side note – the final track on this new album is called ‘Take Mine’. A sister track perhaps to Like Mine?)
In May 2023, Michael Rietmulder from the The Seattle Times reported how the album came about :
“Neither “Same Devil” nor the Carlile and Alicia Keys duet “A Beautiful Noise,” co-written by the Morton-reared Clark, took home any hardware. But at the Grammys daytime ceremony that year, the seeds were planted for deeper collaboration — plans cemented during a shrimping-season excursion on Whidbey Island.
“When we didn’t win, [Carlile] leaned over to me and said, ‘Hey buddy, you know I’d love to produce a whole record on you,’” Clark recalled. “I was like, ‘Really?!’ I was really intrigued by that, and as we were walking out of the [ceremony], she’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve already thought about it … To me, it would be like your return to the Northwest.’ That really spoke to my heart.”
“As she typically does with her producers, Clark sent Carlile a batch of 18-24 songs, with Carlile homing in on songs that, as she explained to Clark, sounded like they were written in her bedroom, as opposed to a punch-in, punch-out writing room.
“That was great for me to hear, and it was a great reminder, because I’ve been in that world of staff songwriting for so long, which is where I learned the craft, [and] it’s invaluable,” Clark said. “But her being outside of that was so great to me, because that’s not what she’s going to gravitate towards.”
(Read about Same Devil (ft Brandi Carlile) here).
Chris Willman reported how a fundamental change happened between the singer and the songs:
Clark brings up some other ways in which Carlile gently pushed her, even before they went in together to Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu late last year. “She and I were talking early on about making some changes to some songs, ad that’s really tough for me, because, while there’s one that I wrote by myself, most of ’em are co-written. And I always feel disrespectful to the other songwriters to make changes on the on the fly in the studio. I said to Brandi, ‘I just always wanna respect the songs and be in service to the songs.’ And Brandi was like: ‘I think that needs to change. I think this time the songs need to be in service to the artist.’ So that really did change things for me — it’s changed the way I look at songwriting, at least for my own artist career moving forward.
While most of the album was recorded at Shangri-La studios, some some vocals and strings done in New York when Brandi Carlile and band were rehearsing for “Saturday Night Live” in 2022.
DEAR INSECURITY
The first released track we heard from the album (although not the first official single – which was a track called Buried) was Dear Insecurity (feat. Brandi Carlile) and was premiered live at Brandi Carlile’s 2023 Girls Just Wanna Weekend where Brandy Clark was a guest performer. That live recording was later released as one of two fanclub only singles for the Bramily that Brandi and the band release each year. Join the Bramily to access that. The album version of Dear Insecurity begins with the beautiful strings of Brandi Carlile band members Sista Strings.
Brandy Clark spoke to Chris Willman how Brandi came to sing on the track:
And that personal track became a duet, with Carlile joining on lead vocals, after a detour in getting there. “When that started, Brandi wanted to get Lucinda Williams on it. And she even sang (a guide vocal) in a way that was like, ‘This is how I think Lu would sing it.’ It felt so good. And I said, ‘Man, Brandi, I know you want to get Lucinda and I love her, but there’s just something about us singing it together that I love.’ And she was like, ‘Oh, well, all you had to do is ask!’ So that vocal that she sang, trying to phrase it the way she thought that Lucinda would phrase it, was the vocal she used. It just really worked for us to do that together, because we’re close to the same age and grew up in the same place and have similar insecurities. So it just really worked for us to do that together.”
Of that song, NPR.org reviewer Brittney McKenna said,
A key moment on Brandy Clark comes four tracks in, when Clark and Carlile join forces for the frank, poignant “Dear Insecurity.” Carlile takes the first stanza, setting up the song’s conceit: Addressing a personified insecurity, she sings, “You take up half this bed, living rent free in my head.” Clark takes the concept deeper, admitting specific worries: “My lips are way too thin, too many miles on my skin.” The interplay of their voices is reason enough for repeated listens, but paired with such honest, warts-and-all lyrics the song feels quietly radical. Country music has a rich history of women baring their souls, but these days such songs are often overshadowed by the bravado and beers of the genre’s male-dominated radio format. Bucking trends and returning to form, Brandy Clark is a beautiful reminder of the potential that comes with opening up.
Brandi Carlile has guest vocals on several tracks, including a duet on Dear Insecurity, and uncreddited vocals on Northwest. (listen to the unmistakable BC tones 1,2,3,4 opening the song)
BURIED
The Seattle Times shared Brandy Clarks thoughts on Brandi Carlile challenging her in writing:
I had never had a producer ask me to make changes to songs. They might change an arrangement, but Brandi asked me to change lyrics, and that was uncomfortable for me — really uncomfortable for me at first. The song ”Buried,” that was originally called ”If You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” Brandi came in and was like, ”This song, that’s like the perfect song, but you’re like three lines away. If you would change this line and this line and this line it would be perfect.” I thought, ”Well, if it’s the perfect song, how come it needs changes?!” I had to put my ego down about those kinds of things.
Early on in the process, I said to her, ”I’m just going to trust you.” Everything she asked me to do, even when in the moment it didn’t feel right to me, I did it because I did trust her. And she was right on all of it because she has such a great instinct as a producer.
Brandy Clark told Mikael Wood from the Los Angeles Times about the lead single BURIED :
On their first day working together last year at Malibu’s storied Shangri-La recording studio, Brandy Clark and her producer, Brandi Carlile, turned their attention to a heartbreaker of an acoustic ballad then titled “If You Don’t Love Me Anymore.”
Clark’s tune runs down the narrator’s planned self-care regimen in the event that she’s jilted — she’ll fly first-class to Paris, she’ll take trippy drugs, she’ll start doing yoga — though it ends with the gutting admission that none of it is likely to heal the wound: “I’ll meet somebody else / Probably get married,” she sings over fingerpicked guitar, her voice cracking ever so slightly at the edges, “I’ll keep it to myself / But I’ll love you till I’m buried.”
It was a perfect song, Carlile decided at Shangri-La — except for the line about yoga.
“She was like, ‘Man, I don’t know, I just don’t think you’d do yoga,’” Clark, 47, says of her Grammy-winning collaborator as she recounts the recording session. “And she was right. I hate yoga.”
The women tweaked the lyric and cut the song live in the studio, Clark’s microphone “turned up as hot as it would go,” the singer remembers, “almost like I was whispering it.” Now called “Buried” — the title was another thing Carlile thought could be improved — the ballad serves as the lead single of Clark’s new self-titled album, which reveals a different side of a country-music songwriter known for more than a decade as one of Nashville’s craftiest and most meticulous storytellers.
Leading up to the release of Brandy Clark – Brandy shared small stories on her social media about tracks from album:
Story 1: Buried
“The day Brandi and I were in the studio recording “Buried” we had an unexpected setback with Shucked… I was feeling sad and fighting tears.When Brandi had me record the vocals, she suggested I basically whisper.
We turned the mic up so it picked up every sound in the vocal booth. I laid down what I thought would be a scratch vocal (at least that’s what Brandi told me)… and it came out so raw and vulnerable that she convinced me to keep it. That’s the coal you hear on the record”
Story 2 & 3 Northwest and She Smoked in the House
When Brandi Carlile approached me about making this record she said that she saw it as “my return to the northwest.” That intrigued me and I shared it with Jessie Jo Dillon, one of my closest friends and collaborators. Jessie Jo suggested that we take a trip out to Washington and try and write a song called “Northwest.” So, that’s what we did. Jessie Jo is from Nashville and I really think her first-time look at the northwest was really essential to what this song is and so many of the details that I wouldn’t have seen because I’ve seen them my whole life.
“She Smoked in the House” didn’t come as easily – I was driving around listening to a lot of Merle Haggard. I got stuck on “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good” for weeks. That song really makes me think of my grandparents and that generation. I just couldn’t get away from it. So I started on a song called “They Smoked in the House,” but I just couldn’t connect with it in the way that I needed to. I remembered someone once telling me that to be general, you must be specific and so I pivoted and started working on “SHE Smoked in the House.” The “SHE” is my grandma Ruth.
Story 4 Up Above The Clouds
“Up Above The Clouds” is one of my favourite songs that I have ever written. In fact, after Jessie Jo Dillon, Jimmy Robbins and I wrote this song, we treated ourselves to a steak dinner. We couldn’t stop talking about how proud we were of the song we’d just written.The initial idea for this song actually came from a photo and caption that Jessie Jo posted while on a flight.. She posted a photo of the blue sky above the clouds, and the line “remember there’s a blue sky up above the clouds,” prompting direct messages from all her songwriter friends dying to write that song with her.
Lucky for me, Jessie Jo saved it for this project. After a family friend of mine heard this song, they shared that their daughter, Cecilia, was sick and that this song gave them hope that a brighter day was near.
I knew we had to dedicate this song to Cecilia and I’m grateful to Jessie Jo and Jimmy for agreeing with me.
The track list for “Brandy Clark”:
1. Ain’t Enough Rocks (feat. Derek Trucks)
2. Buried
3. Tell Her You Don’t Love Her (feat. Lucius)
4. Dear Insecurity (feat. Brandi Carlile)
5. Come Back To Me
6. Northwest
7. She Smoked In The House
8. Up Above The Clouds – Cecilia’s Song
9. All Over Again
10. Best Ones
11. Take Mine
As of release date of 19th May 2023, the album has only been released digitally and on CD.
Vinyl was announced later and released in September 2023. Then December 2023 following Grammy noms, a new limited edition, colored vinyl was announced for presale.
