Brandy Clark surges to superstardom on new album aided by Brandi Carlile and other friends

Brandy Clark's career is a study of the dichotomies created not by imposter syndrome but instead by the curse of greatness.

The Country Music Association Song of the Year-honored 11-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter was recently nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway musical "Shucked," which she co-composed alongside songwriter Shane McAnally. Clark could be halfway to an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award wins) but still searching for solo country artistic superstardom.

Via her self-titled album arriving Friday from Warner Music, Clark is likely to have finally arrived — 10 years after her solo debut — at a pinnacle of achievement that she may not have sought but is overjoyed and relieved to be receiving.

She's in a small class of dynamic female country music creators like Ashley McBryde, Nicolette "Pillbox Patti" Hayford and Caylee Hammack who, as fellow songwriter Laura Veltz noted in March, write "honest stories" as "empathetic and risk-driven poetry" and "vulnerable art."

Leslie Fram, CMT's senior vice president of music and talent, said in a 2020 interview that CMT's decade-old "Next Women of Country" program was inspired by Clark's 2013 album "12 Stories," which was described as "dazzlingly witty and insightful" by the Los Angeles Times, but still lacking country music industry support.

Clark's albums deserved broader commercial and social appeal then, but her folk-rock stood to the left of the genre's most pop-leaning and deeply soulful era in 30 years.

In the same year that Chris Stapleton's cover of "Tennessee Whiskey" and Little Big Town's "Girl Crush" were two of country music's biggest songs, Clark received the 2015 Grammy award fir Best New Artist. In the span between her sophomore and third albums, Florida Georgia Line spent 46 consecutive weeks in 2018 on top of country's sales charts with the Bebe Rexha duet "Meant To Be."

Though Clark tells The Tennessean that she's never felt creatively confined during her impressive career, she did note that revealing the core of her humanity has always been somewhat troublesome.

Similar to the new album's producer — emerging Americana-to-rock star and studio dynamo of the moment Brandi Carlile — she's a queer native of Washington State with a humble, blue-collar work ethic.

However, unlike other albums, being surrounded by a group of creators who shared her two decades of Nashville experience and erred on the artistic side of folk-aimed country and soul-baring Americana aided her process.

For the most part, Clark's career has been a fascinating interplay between her ability to drive Nashville's mainstream toward plaintive pop and her desire to dig deep into the grooves playing within her soul.

With Carlile at the helm, she was able to achieve more of the latter than the former than ever before.

"Achieving artistic honesty at all costs is Brandi's superpower," Clark says.

In Clark's mind, Carlile's production goal is working to elevate critically acclaimed artists to a "Song of the Year" level proportional to the quality of their artistry.

Also, as a queer artist with country roots who is now occupying space at the highest echelon of pop and rock music, she's a solo actress who, though an adept collaborator, is still an outlier. She's now on a mission to invite fellow breakout stars to the most elevated industry heights.

Clark now joins an impressive crew of artists — the Highwomen, Joni Mitchell, Allison Russell and Tanya Tucker among them — who have benefitted from Carlile's growing spotlight, which has not cast a shadow but instead has offered a springboard to sustainable, career-redefining acclaim.

Clark describes sending her completed album to her bandleader, Vanessa McGowan, and finding that she and other frequent collaborators not in the room at Malibu's vaunted, Rick Rubin-owned Shangri La Studios thought the final product was "excitingly cool."

Collaborators on the album include Brooklyn-based indie-pop band Lucius, Nashville-based string duo Sista Strings, and Derek Trucks. Trucks' three decades of guitar work in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Allman Brothers and with artists such as Eric Clapton, Bela Fleck and Buddy Guy have him listed as one of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

"The beautiful magic that happened in the studio on this album made absolutely no sense on paper," Clark says.

"Instead of things like inspiring, seven-minute 'Americana' songs without choruses, I got back to just writing things [that emerge] as just structurally sound country and rock songs," she adds.

"The music on this record is beautiful, but my writing is more flatly stated and plain-spoken than ever. Greats like John Prine and Harlan Howard's excellence came from knowing how to layer simple [metaphorical] meat on the bone and make it so well that you keep gnawing at it until you get down to the marrow."

Of the album's material, the song "She Smoked in the House" exists as an earnest, engrossing remembrance of her grandmother,

Having listened to Merle Haggard's "Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)" in her car for literally a month, Clark recalled advice from legendary songwriter Mark D. Sanders ("Heads Carolina, Tails California" for JoDee Messina, "I Hope You Dance" by Lee Ann Womack, among others).

"[Mark] once told me that to be general, you must first be specific."

The melodious folk ballad opens with a description of how Clark's grandmother was a Pepsi-drinking listener of George Jones and Buck Owens, who "put holes in the couch" with "lipstick-colored [cigarette] butts" when she smoked in the house.

Because of the major mainstream success of Carlile — and associated artists — of late, Clark's latest album could achieve a level of renown unprecedented for her career.

Though initially baffled into laughter by the possibility, she calms and offers a focused response.

"Believing in yourself and making music from your heart — and being surrounded by people you trust and admire — makes you create music that matters not just to yourself, but sometimes also to the world."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Brandy Clark releases a new album produced by Brandi Carlile