- 2025-09-04
-
MUSIC
-
Brandi Carlile Announces New Album “Returning To Myself”, Shares Title Track
American singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile has announced her upcoming eighth studio album “Returning To Myself” will be released on October 24, 2025 via Interscope Records and Lost Highway.
This marks her first album in four years since the 2021 album “In These Silent Days”. Also, the album follows the collaborative album “Who Believes In Angels?” with British singer-songwriter Elton John.
The album comprises 10 tracks, produced by Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner, and Justin Vernon.
From the album, she released the title track “Returning To Myself” on September 3, 2025.
The track was written and produced by Brandi Carlile, with production by Andrew Watt.
The accompanying music video was directed by Floria Sigismondi.
Brandi Carlile said of the song, “I think people are going to hear that song in different ways. Some are going to hear it as a call to return to themselves. Some are going to hear it as a justification not to. And I love that about it because it is a deeply conflicting feeling. There is no a-ha moment in that song. It’s just a contemplation of, ‘Is enlightenment aloneness or is enlightenment learning togetherness and sacrificial love?'”- Brandi Carlile said of the album, “One thing that came to mind early on was Emmylou Harris’ groundbreaking album 'Wrecking Ball.' I’ve loved that album my whole life and referenced it musically in the studio more times than I can count, but I never contemplated it conceptually. I don’t know if Daniel Lanois or Emmy would echo my take on it, but I see it as a defining moment for Emmy because of where she was in her career and life, and specifically how the album sounded against the landscape it emerged into. ...I wanted to make something that was undeniably and willfully me. It’s amazing how many people it takes to do that sometimes! But that’s kind of the point. it took many souls to make 'Wrecking Ball' but they were coming from a supportive mindset. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to be carried and still end up on your own two feet.”
-
She continued, “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.”
She added, “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.”
Photo by Collier Schorr - source : Apple Music
