Brandi Carlile’s By The Way, I Forgive You wasn’t just a breakthrough album — it was the moment the world finally caught up with what the diehards already knew. “We were only reacting to the really emotional stuff,” she told me from her barn studio in the woods outside Seattle, where she hosted a private listening session before the album even dropped. “And then something happened to me when I became a parent… I lost that part of me that wanted to be cool.”
It’s easy to forget now that she’s a Grammy magnet and Joni Mitchell’s karaoke partner, but in 2018, Carlile was still crossing over from acclaimed singer-songwriter to household name. That record — raw, poetic, heavy as hell — was the tipping point, powered in large part by The Joke, a song that punches like a gut-check for anyone who’s ever flinched at their reflection.
“And then you have a kid, and all of that empathy comes rushing back. Suddenly you’re not just remembering the times you got bullied — you’re reliving them through your child’s eyes.”
Carlile talks about becoming a mother like it’s both a spiritual awakening and a horror movie rerun. “I can’t watch violent stuff anymore. Not because it’s scary. Because everyone is somebody’s baby,” she said, laughing in that nervous, too-true kind of way. “I’m like, ‘Nope! Don’t go up those stairs!’”
The album’s themes: Acceptance. Forgiveness. But not in the hashtag-blessed, yoga-influencer way.
“Forgiveness isn’t some suburban white Judeo-Christian thing,” she said. “It’s radical. It’s a stunning and difficult process. Acceptance doesn’t mean complacency. And radical acceptance? That’s loving someone even if they’ll never meet your requirements.”
This wasn’t just a personal reckoning — it was a political one. “I always wanted to be like Dolly — not political. But I’m not that girl,” she shrugged. “Politics are personal for me. I wouldn’t be married if not for American politics. I wouldn’t have my kid. So yeah, it shows up in the songs.”
At the time, she’d just celebrated the 10-year anniversary of The Story, a landmark album covered by everyone from Dolly Parton to Pearl Jam. Did those ghosts sneak into the new songs?
“All that dust is all over everything now,” she said. “The songs I wrote as a teenager still haunt me. I’m still doing all those things. I still have all those problems. We don’t change. We just collect realizations.”
One of those realizations is hearing other people — especially men — sing her songs. “I love that gender shift,” she said. “It’s cool. I’ll go on YouTube and watch fans cover them, kids in school, even people on singing shows. I get such a kick out of it.”
But don’t let the hopeful lines fool you. Carlile’s vision of the future — “There will be color and language and nobody wanting to fight” — isn’t naïve. It’s hard-earned optimism with battle scars. “If we were ever close,” she said, “it would be right now. Because the cracks have been shown. And now it’s time to let the light through.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
