After spending the past few years hanging with music legends like Joni Mitchell & Elton John, out recording artist Brandi Carlile has announced her first solo album since 2021, titled Returning To Myself, along with a gorgeous video for the introspective title song.
The gentle guitar-driven track finds the 11-time Grammy winner pensive as she considers whether focusing on oneself after a period of sharing is necessary, selfish, or perhaps a bit of both.
In the music video, Carlile wanders alone along the coastline reflecting on the fear of being alone with oneself: “Returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do, but it’s the only thing to do.”
Brandi Carlile (screen capture from ‘Returning To Myself’)“I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with,” Carlile said in a statement about the LP. “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.”
“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,” she adds.
“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.”
Earlier this year, Carlile and Elton John released their collaborative album, Who Believes in Angels?
Brandi Carlile’s new album Returning To Myself is set to drop October 24.
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