For Brandi Carlile, solitude is overrated

You need to learn to be alone with your thoughts. You need to be able to entertain yourself. You need to take solo time to recharge. Or do you?

As far as Brandi Carlile is concerned, solitude isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Carlile has just released a new album called Returning to Myself and today, she’ll talk about how being alone after a very busy few years working with other artists like Joni Mitchell, Elton John and Lucius helped her realize just how much she loves being around other people.

This new album was a team effort with contributions from The National‘s Aaron Dessner, Justin Vernon and Andrew Watt. We talk about making the album, plus Carlile opens up about her friendship with Mitchell and how she keeps it together when the world starts to feel like too much.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod.  Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe’s engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.