Brandi Carlile on being a "tortured songwriter"
“I’m a really tortured songwriter. Everything I’ve loved that I’ve written has been when I was absolutely miserable, and I’ve been miserable a lot in my life. Honestly, I’ve been worried about it for the last three years, because brick by brick my life’s been getting deliriously wonderful. I’ve wondered, well, what about my lonely friend? What about my lonely passenger, my songwriter, who needs to be really twisted to get this stuff out? I was worried about it, and the twins were reassuring. Tim said something I think is really cool. The gist of it is that you can even write better sad songs when you’re happy.”
From an interview with Brandi Carlile and her twin collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth about their collaborative songwriting, published in the May 2015 issue of Acoustic Guitar. Read an excerpt about their collaborative process and the writing of “The Story.”