“Tragedy”
from the album Brandi Carlile
2005
iTunes
Twenty-three-year-old singer-songwriter who’s gone back to nature, living in an isolated cabin outside Seattle with a dog, a cat, a horse and an acoustic guitar. Her ethereal, melancholy ballads made fans of Dave Matthews and James Taylor, both of whom she has joined onstage. Her debut album arrived summer ’05.
Carlile’s songs have a spare heartache that reflects her love for old-school country, but she loves new-school mopers like Radiohead and Jeff Buckley just as much. “I get all sorts of comparisons but never to one person,” she says. “It’s more like, ‘Sheryl Crow meets Patsy Cline,’ which makes me feel good. At least there’s some originality there.”
When she was sixteen, Carlile landed a gig as a backup singer for an Elvis impersonator. “We put on sequined costumes, did choreographed dances — the whole nine yards,” she says. “It’s how I learned about harmonies and layering vocals.”