Another single from the In These Silent Days album. During the promotion for the record, the 3 main songs that would be sung by the band on TV appearences etc included, Right On Time – the first main single, then either You and Me On The Rock or Broken Horses.
Broken Horses, is named after her memoir from the same year.
The song has been nominated in the Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance in the 2023 Grammy Awards. (The band’s first Grammy nods in the Rock category)
Broken Horses, is named after her memoir from the same year.
In an interview with Zane Lowe from Apple Music, Brandi said of this song (and specifically the note at the end “I learned that from the Soundgarden stuff”. She is referring to the two tracks she recorded with Soundgarden for the EP A Rooster Says in 2020. When discussing Chris Cornell she says, “He certainly painted pictures in our minds for ever and ever, and as an interpreter something does happen to you when you sing his songs, when you sing those lyrics and stand up there with that band, you don’t come back down from it. I was never going to go in and make another recorde after singing Black Hole Sun and Searching with My Good Eye Closes the same way again. It was alway going to have some Soundgarden in there, so Broken Horses is probably the most blatent.
She continues “The reason I named it after the book. is that it unlocked so many emotions in me and gave me so much perspective and allowed me to not feel shame about the things I was feeling. With Broken Horses I realised after some reflection I had some really rightous anger about the way I’ve come up in this world as a queer person, and the ways thats affected my marriage and my family and my faith and I wanted to scream about it a little bit and Broken Horses is just me, sort of screaming about it. Like “im really happy but it wasn’t fair, and I want to close some doors”.….. I don’t sing that song… I spit that song!”
There is an alternative version on the Canyon Haze delux version.
Broken Horses lyrics
I wear my father’s leather on the inside of my skin
I’m a tried and weathered woman, but I won’t be tried again
Don’t think that you can come for me without your Sunday best
You had better call your priest and hope the devil gets the rest
Before I do
Oh, and I will do
I have worn the jester’s bells and I have banished with the fools
I have worshiped at the altar of the puppet master’s rules
I have held my tongue too many scenes before the final act
With my children in the cheap seats and a zipper on my back
Thanks to you
No thanks to you
Tethered in wide open spaces
And fields that lead for miles
Right into the barrel of a gun
Mendin’ up your fences with my
Horses runnin’ wild
Only broken horses know to run
I have ever so politely treaded softly for your grace
I have whispered through the tears and pleaded sweetly to your face
It is time to spit you out like lukewarm water from my mouth
I will always taste the apathy, but I won’t pass it down
It dies with you
You
Tethered in wide open spaces
And fields that lead for miles
Right into the barrel of a gun
Mendin’ up your fences with my
Horses runnin’ wild
Only broken horses know to run
I wear my father’s leather on the inside of my skin
I’m a tried and weathered woman, but I won’t be tried again
Don’t think that you can come for me without your Sunday best
You had better call your priest and hope the devil gets the rest
Before I do
Oh, and I will do
Tethered in wide open spaces
And fields that lead for miles
Right into the barrel of a gun
Mendin’ up your fences with my
Horses runnin’ wild
Only broken horses know to run
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Brandi Carlile / Phil Hanseroth / Tim Hanseroth
Broken Horses lyrics © Warner Chapell Music, Inc
