Brandi Carlile is back with her eighth studio album and first solo project in four years. After pouring herself into collaborations with musical icons and legends, the 11x GRAMMY Award-winning songwriter is looking inward, reflecting backward, and ultimately, returning home on her brand-new album, Returning To Myself—out October 24 on Interscope Records/Lost Highway (pre-order).
Produced by Carlile, Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner, and Justin Vernon, the album features ten songs, including the title track—out today alongside the official music video, directed by Floria Sigismondi. Watch HERE.
Of “Returning To Myself,” Carlile shares:
“I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with. Returning to myself is not just a lonely, but a painfully boring thing to do. So much so that I’m actually not at all interested in doing it.
I prefer to double, triple, and quadruple down on co-dependency, which I’ve come to learn that outside of 12-Step programs and junior high school relationships, isn’t really that unhealthy at all…
For me the key to learning to ‘be alone’ is not being alone at all. It’s being alone in a crowded room. It’s hearing an unexpected doorbell ring and wondering who has shown up to watch me read my book and bite my nails all day. That a guest can be a deep lean-in over a cheap bottle of wine or simply an eyebrow raise and a gesture toward the refrigerator while I play Zelda…where I totally choose myself with someone so close to me I can hear them relax.
People want to be together in silence more than we allow in our time. It’s falling deeply in love with the car wheels on a gravel road. The possibility of the visitor. The “not being alone-ness” of it all…
Togetherness has given me everything I love about being alive. Starting with my original family in a single wide mobile home, gathered around a wood stove all the way to living with my band, haunting my wife everywhere she goes, raising my children on a tour bus, learning at the feet of Joni Mitchell, to making music with my greatest hero of all time, Elton John.
Why is it heroic to untether, when the tense work of togetherness is so much more interesting?
…because I don’t want to do it. Because I don’t want to return to myself.
And that’s why I will.”
In addition to Carlile, Watt, Dessner, and Vernon, the album features her longtime bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth and SistaStrings (Monique and Chauntee Ross), as well as Josh Klinghoffer, Chad Smith, Matt Chamberlain, Dave Mackay, Rob Moose, Blake Mills, Mark Isham, and Stewart Cole.
Carlile and her band will perform three sold-out nights at Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre this weekend. Additional tour dates to be announced.
Carlile is an Oscar-nominated and 11x GRAMMY Award-winning singer, songwriter, performer, and producer; 2x EMMY Award-winning composer, lyricist, and writer; #1 New York Times bestselling author; and activist known as one of music’s most respected voices.
Throughout her acclaimed career, Carlile has released eight studio albums, including her most recent, Who Believes in Angels?—the universally acclaimed collaborative album with her childhood hero Elton John—which debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. and top 10 in the U.S.
Additionally, Carlile continues her work as a renowned producer with recent GRAMMY Award-winning projects from Joni Mitchell and Brandy Clark. She also produced and recorded a rendition of Indigo Girls’ “Closer To Fine” with her wife, Catherine, for Barbie The Album, as well as a version of “Home,” featured in the final season of Ted Lasso.
She received her first Oscar nomination in the Original Song category in January 2025 for “Never Too Late,” a track written alongside Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Andrew Watt for the Disney+ documentary of the same name on Elton’s life and career.
Beloved by her peers, Carlile has collaborated with artists such as The Highwomen, Soundgarden, Sam Smith, Alicia Keys, Hozier, Noah Kahan, Jacob Collier, P!nk, and Dolly Parton. She was named OUT Magazine’s 2023 “Icon of the Year,” awarded Billboard’s Women In Music “Trailblazer Award,” CMT’s Next Women of Country “Impact Award,” and NMPA’s 2023 Songwriter Icon Award, while receiving multiple recognitions from the Americana Music Association.
On top of being a musician and writer, Carlile is a founder of the Looking Out Foundation, which has raised over $8 million for grassroots causes to date. She lives in rural Washington state with her wife and two daughters, Evangeline and Elijah.
Brandi Carlile Confirmed Tour Dates
September 5 — Morrison, CO — Red Rocks Amphitheatre
September 6 — Morrison, CO — Red Rocks Amphitheatre
September 7 — Morrison, CO — Red Rocks Amphitheatre
