After a string of Grammys, Emmys, and every other kind of award, Brandi Carlile has a music career that feels almost inevitable. Who Believes in Angels?, her new collaborative release with Elton John, puts her next to one of rock's most lauded figures. The two have been friends for years, even vacationing together, so the match-up seems obvious. Carlile's career was never a sure thing, though. When she was growing up in a single-wide trailer, nearly dying from illness in childhood and later dropping out of high school, nothing was a given.

Fortunately for Americana fans, she found a way, partnering with punk rockers Phil and Tim Hanseroth. The trio's songwriting suited Carlile's voice, and the group worked its way through a variety of genres. Carlile's voice, a mix of country twang and operatic power, enabled her to charm with straightforward folk or overwhelm with epic ballads. She developed a distinct identity across these shifting sounds, which listeners can hear on her career-defining cuts.

10 Throw It All Away

Album: Brandi Carlile (2005)

Carlile made her debut for Columbia Records, somehow being major-label ready after playing Seattle clubs and selling home-recorded music. The self-titled debut holds up as comfortable folk-rock, its musicality and grace making its accessibility more of a credit than a detriment. The highlight remains "Throw It All Away," co-written with Tim Hanseroth. The foundational pieces of Carlile's music are in place, including the steady pace and the sensitive use of dynamics.

The Hanseroth Twins released their own debut album, Vera, just last year, and it's worth tracking down.

We get a snapshot of Carlile's central concerns as well. She's transparent here - her deeply felt love is apparent - but she's unwilling to express it without some poetry. She really does offer to throw all of it away. Partly she means it metaphorically, chucking the sun and the moon. More pointedly, she means it literally and emotionally. She has fear and doubt and loneliness, and with her partner, she can get rid of that baggage. As always, Carlile's generous: her partner should feel able to do the same.

9 The Story

Album: The Story (2007)

Brandi Carlile the album received due praise, but Brandi Carlile the artist properly broke through with her single "The Story" off the album of the same name. Surprisingly, Carlile didn't have a hand in writing it. Phil Hanseroth had composed it before he was even working with the singer. The cut feels like all Brandi, though - it's her intensity that turns the song from a simple love ode into something overwhelming.

The track can be almost unnerving. It starts calmly and, unlike the band's more usual approach, quickly turns into a rocker. Carlile sounds urgent in her delivery. "The Story" isn't about romance, but about wild ion; it's not clear Carlile's completely sane, but at the same time, it's a craziness developed through time and reflection. Carlile at her best is vulnerable, giving, and idiosyncratic, all of which comes through on this memorable cut, one of her finest.

8 Turpentine

Album: The Story (2007)

"Turpentine," the other standout track from The Story, was a Carlile solo composition. It might be her finest earworm, but it's not necessarily an emotion you want to catch (though Grey's Anatomy did, using the track in a special 2007 episode). She sings of feeling as if her emotions are wasted, like wine gone to rot, from something pleasant to something toxic. The fact that "It's 6am and I'm all messed up" suggests that she might be drinking some on her own, or at least so upset that she can't sleep.

Carlile wrote this as a teenager, and the loss, change, and reflections on "growing up" in the song could be read as a bit of a coming of age, but the song succeeds because it can be understood in so many ways. She could be singing to a lost family member, a lost friend, or a lost romantic partner (though the first two work much better: "wishing I was ten again / So I could be your friend again"). Listeners can find their own catharsis through any season, grappling with the fallout of time ing in ways we might not desire.

7 Heart's Content

Album: Bear Creek (2012)

By the time Bear Creek came out, Carlile had continued expanding her sound, even singing with a symphony, before returning to a more immediate sort of folk rock. "Heart's Content" excels with its simplicity, led by an easygoing piano and bass ed by a tasteful violin. Carlile takes a mature approach to thinking about the different paths two people might follow. Her relationship with her brother has long been thought-provoking, and here she sits back and meditates with a new perspective.

"Heart's Content" excels with its simplicity.

As the strings come to the fore, they highlight the classic nature of her songwriting. Carlile typically sticks to folk-rock, but she could have succeeded in Tin Pan Alley or Brill Building or pretty much any era. Her knack for melody combined with vocal and emotional warmth enables her to convey something special with each performance and, while "Heart's Content" might not have the visibility of her Grammy winners, it captures some essential elements of her art.

6 That Wasn't Me

Album: Bear Creek (2012)

Call it foreshadowing. "That Wasn't Me" brings Elton John's influence on Carlile to the fore. This cut, featuring the singer and her piano, could have been on one of John's big '70s albums, and it certainly provides a fitting midcareer point connecting her childhood listening and her recent collaborations. The visible influence doesn't hinder the song's success, and Carlile's controlled delivery lets her show exactly how to do a song like this one.

Tanya Tucker covered this song for her 2023 album Sweet Western Sound, which Carlile produced along with Shooter Jennings. It's a more countrified take, but as stellar as it should be.

It's a tough song to do, thinking about addiction and identity. The song's singer denies the negative connections to addiction - "That wasn't me" - but seeks to show who they truly are through the times they were "a blessing" and a help, and even when they were weak. Carlile gives the character such depth that it turns the struggle into a heartbreaking and resonant performance.

5 The Eye

Album: The Firewatcher's Daughter (2015)

Carlile sings "The Eye" in three-part harmony with the Hanseroths, and the vocals are so potent that the cut needs little else. The song draws some musical inspiration from old-time music, but it sounds thoroughly modern in delivery. The lyrics, co-written by Carlile and Tim Hanseroth, show what the act does at their best. The general point of the song is explicit enough: "It really breaks my heart to see a dear old friend / Go down to the worn out place again." The emotions are more complex, and the imagery develops content less immediate than might be expected.

When the singers suggest "You can dance in a hurricane / But only if you're standing in the eye," they offer a maxim applicable to many situations. It could be another song about self-destruction; it could be a track about being caught in an abusive relationship. The openness of the conceit allows listeners to connect with it as necessary without the song losing its core grounding.

4 The Joke

Album: By The Way, I Forgive You (2018)

Carlile may never write another song as powerful as "The Joke," the lead single off By The Way, I Forgive You. She wrote for anyone marginalized or misunderstood, including boys who don't fit traditional ideas of masculinity, girls suffering in a male-dominated society, and immigrants who have shown more courage in their battles. For any outsider, Carlile seems to say: know that it gets better, and in the end, justice will come out.

The band wanted to write another song with a big vocal moment (casual listeners might have missed it in the folk numbers, but Carlile's voice is truly exceptional), and they did just that. Almost impossible to sing along to, "The Joke" goes massive for the chorus, and Carlile's performance of it at the Grammys remains one of the award show's most staggering moments. Much of her career has been built on restraint and careful delivery, so when Carlile chooses to go big, it matters, and she delivers something beyond comparison.

3 Right On Time

Album: In These Silent Days (2021)

If "The Joke" hadn't convinced listeners that Carlile was a bona fide diva (in the best sense of the word), then "Right on Time" certainly did. The twang remains in her voice, but Carlile leaves her folk roots here, giving the track the most impressive vocal performance of her career, the second note on "right" existing to elicit goosebumps.

When Carlile performed "Right on Time" at the Grammys, Joni Mitchell (along with Bonnie Raitt) introduced her. Mitchell is one of Carlile's heroes, and Carlile proved to be a rejuvenating influence in return, and Mitchell gave her own Grammy performance a few years later.

The song, which won Grammys for Record of The Year and Song of The year, comes from and is set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Carlile considers the ways we found ourselves separated during those months, an isolation useful in acknowledging individual separations. In adversity and in the persistence of life, we can grow.

Carlile acknowledges that what happened was right (and the same can be true in individual moments), but that if we use the moment properly, it can be right on time. It's a complex feeling, rendered through a brilliant vocal, and it stands as one of the high points of Carlile's career.

2 Broken Horses

Album: In These Silent Days (2021)

With tight songwriting and a diversity of styles, In These Silent Days turned out to be Carlile's best album. The Laurel Canyon sound, the folk, and the pop all made sense, but on "Broken Horses," Carlile went harder into rock than she ever had before, and the track ended up winning two Grammys in 2023. The cut has a big riff, a driving beat, and a slick lead guitar part, all of which effectively a powerful statement.

On "Broken Horses," Carlile went harder into rock than she ever had before.

Carlile sings with anger here, a rarity in her catalog. She's not speaking of "broken horses" as in those that are trained, but of those that have been damaged, like she has. That kind of breaking can provide wisdom to see bad things to come, but it can also lead to strength, and on this track, Carlile breaks her metaphorical tether, calling out those who have been cruel or prejudiced. Her "horses" run with wisdom, anger, and strength, broken though they may be.

1 Never Too Late

Album: Who Believes in Angels? (2025)

"Never Too Late" serves as a summation of Carlile's career thus far. Elton John was one of her primary inspirations as a young musician (and simply as a young person), and she later came to befriend him. She wrote the initial lyrics for this song, and the pair completed it along with songwriter Bernie Taupin and producer Andrew Watt. It became the first single from the documentary Elton John: Never Too Late.

The song makes sense in both their careers, with the melody suiting John so well, and the reflections on finding peace at any moment, even if it arrives later than expected, sounds fundamental to Carlile's art. The duet hits well; this is truly a collaborative partnership and not just two stars accidentally aligning. When Carlile sings, "There's a last time for everything / But we won't ever know," it has a touch of melancholy, but it's mostly an encouragement to embrace the moment, exactly the sort of sentiment Brandi Carlile been expressing over the last 20 years.