The Joke was the lead single from the album By The Way I Forgive You, produced by the band, Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings. Brandi Carlile credits the live performance of this song at The Grammy’s as a step change moment in the band’s success. The song was released on November 13 2017. The writing as per usual were the band – but they also gave a writing credit to Dave Cobb.

The Joke single was released on digital and as well as a limited pressing of 500 on 7 inch vinyl. The vinyl was pressed in an Australian record plant (Zenith Records) and shipped back to the US. Zenith Records actually pressed a few extra (likely test pressings, but not stated on label), and these are out in the wild in a white sleeve. There at least 5 or 6 extra copies beyond the 500 known to exist. The image on the cover sleeve is also the same one in the gate fold of the vinyl sleeve. The photo was taken by Pete Souza on Whidbey Island off Seattle. The B side is “Hold Out Your Hand”.

In a podcast Brandi Carlile did with Hillary Clinton (You and Me Both), she tells Hillary Clinton, that the lyrics in the song were inspired in part by her. She says,“I think that you are such a special person, you are such a gift to the world, you have been a gift to my life. You know the song, The Joke, that I sang at the Grammy’s, I wrote that first line, in the second verse, about you.“

“You get discouraged, don’t you, girl?
It’s your brother’s world for a while longer”

In the NPR article at the time Ann Powers wrote:

“The Joke,” the first track to be released from By The Way, exemplifies the album’s massive ambition. A country-rock aria dedicated to the delicate boys and striving girls born into — and, Carlile insists, destined to triumph over — this divisive time, “The Joke” offers a stunning vocal performance from Carlile, swathed in warm piano, big drums and a perfect string arrangement by the late Paul Buckmaster.

If “The Joke” leads some fans toward thoughts of “The Story,” it’s not a total accident. “Actually it started off with Dave insinuating that we haven’t had a vocal moment like ‘The Story’ since, well, ‘The Story,'” Carlile said, joining Cobb during a break in making a video capturing the intensity of the song in the setting where it was recorded. “We all went home that night and I was like, who tells you to rewrite a song that you wrote a decade ago? But it just kept nagging me — like the truth does, you know.”

“The Story” is bleedingly personal, like many of Carlile’s songs. “The Joke,” conversely, looks outward, reflecting the compassion she has developed as a seasoned artist, parent and activist. “There are so many people feeling misrepresented [today],” she said. “So many people feeling unloved. Boys feeling marginalized and forced into these kind of awkward shapes of masculinity that they do or don’t belong in… so many men and boys are trans or disabled or shy. Little girls who got so excited for the last election, and are dealing with the fallout. The song is just for people that feel under-represented, unloved or illegal.”

To tackle this big subject, Carlile and Cobb devised a correspondingly grand musical setting. “I was playing her Elvis Presley’s ‘American Trilogy,'” Cobb said, referring to the King’s medley of patriotic songs from 1972. “There’s something magical about that recording. I mean it’s the way it affects you; the way it’s big in the chords, just pulling every single emotion out of you. So I played that, and then she wrote ‘The Joke.'” He laughed. “I played her one of the greatest songs of all time, and then she wrote one of the greatest written since that one.”

In her 2021 memoir Broken Horse’s she wrote about the writing of the song:

“I woke up the next morning with ‘The Joke’ beating at the inside of my chest, trying to get out like a bird. It was a day off. Everyone was gone except my cellist, Josh. I ran into the kitchen and told him we had to go. He threw the ingredients for the sandwich he was making into a Ziploc bag and followed me blindly into an Uber. On the way to the studio, I called Eddie the engineer, and told him I was coming down. I asked him if he’d meet me and let me in. He did.

“When we got to RCA Studios around ten in the morning on a Sunday, it was pitch-black. I gave Josh four chords and asked him to go to a corner of the room with just his cello and play them for as long as it took. Two of the chords Dave had given me: D to A minor. I was hearing a verse melody from one of Phil’s songs from fifteen years ago that we never wrote.

“I thought about Christopher and his T-shirt. I thought about our sneering president and the way he laughed at people who were suffering. I thought about the little girls who wanted a female president. I thought of Aleppo, Jordan, Iraq, and all the beautiful children from the Story Campaign living their lives in refugee camps. I thought about mothers fleeing bombs and violence, carrying their babies on their backs. And I thought about Jesus.

“You don’t have to like that Jesus is my home base. You can use it to discredit me in the name of ALL the harm Christianity has done. In fact, every single thing I mentioned above has been impacted negatively by Christianity in one way or the other. I am okay with that perspective and I think it’s healthy. I, too, have been impacted negatively by it. But something mystical brings me back time and time again to the revolutionary gospel of forgiveness.

“I wrote ‘The Joke’ in a half hour. It’s not a song as much as the acknowledgment of a promise.

“I went out an all-hands-on-deck message to everyone. They all came in—Dave, the twins, Chris, and Shooter [Jennings]. I couldn’t wait to play Dave ‘The Joke.’

“‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s the best song you’ve ever written.’

“The real truth is that we all wrote it. The song wouldn’t exist without Dave and the twins.

Josh Neumann, the bands full time cellist, tells the story of The Joke’s writing in The Bramily Podcast. He says, “The best experience for me from By The Way I Forgive You, is Brandi came up to me one day when I was cooking breakfast. It was a day off. She says ‘Dave wants me to write a song, that’s the new Story.” He continues “She asked me if I could go into the studio, just the two of us, and play cello, while she sat in a corner and wrote. I was probably playing stuff off Yuba, I brought my little loop pedal, played for a couple of hours, and she was just in the corner writing. And then she came over to me and was like ‘ok can you play this kind of melody… and we started writing The Joke, just the two of us. We wrote The Joke originally as a cello voice duet and recorded it, and sent it to Dave [Cobb], that night….. its pretty cool to be a part of the process so early, to see her writing those words in the room, and then be in the song. I’d never seen that before.” He speculates that he still has the original recordings and one day Brandi may release it as a Bramily special.

The full credits for this song are:
Brandi Carlile – Vocals, Piano
Dave Cobb – Guitar
Phil Hanseroth – Bass, Background Vocals
Tim Hanseroth – Background Vocals, Electric Guitar
Carol Rabinowitz – Cello
Chris Powell – Drums, Percussion
Shooter Jennings – Keyboards, Organ
Kristin Wikinson – Viola
Alicia Enstrom – Violin
David Angell – Violin,
Joshua Neumann – Violin

Brandi Carlile – Songwriter
Dave Cobb – Songwriter
Phil Hanseroth – Songwriter
Tim Hanseroth – Songwriter
Kristin Wikinson – String Arranger

Dave Cobb – Producer
Brandon Bost – Engineer
Eddie Spear – Engineer
Shooter Jennings – Producer
Pete Lyman – Mastering Engineer
Tom Elmhirst – Mixing Engineer
Gena Johnson – Assistant Recording Engineer

The Lyrics

You’re feeling nervous, aren’t you, boy?
With your quiet voice and impeccable style
Don’t ever let them steal your joy
And your gentle ways
To keep ’em from running wild

They can kick dirt in your face
Dress you down, and tell you that your place
Is in the middle, when they hate the way you shine

I see you tugging on your shirt
Trying to hide inside of it
And hide how much it hurts

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

You get discouraged, don’t you, girl?
It’s your brother’s world for a while longer
We gotta dance with the devil on a river
To beat the stream
Call it living the dream, call it kicking the ladder

They come to kick dirt in your face
To call you weak and then displace you
After carrying your baby on your back across the desert
I saw your eyes behind your hair
And you’re looking tired, but you don’t look scared

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Phillip John Hanseroth / Timothy Jay Hanseroth / Brandi M. Carlile / David W. Jr Cobb