The Grammy award winning queen of Americana talks Ed Nash through the pivotal songs in her life.
As a natural storyteller, Brandy Clark has an incredible memory for lyrics.
Which isn’t surprising for an artist with a formidable back catalogue. Clark has released four solo albums, co-wrote the musical comedy Shucked, and has written for and with artists such as Sheryl Crow, Kacey Musgraves, Kenny Rogers and LeAnn Rimes. Having initially made her name writing for others, Clark’s star as a performer is in the ascendant, her song “Dear Insecurity” won Best Americana Performance at the 2024 Grammy Awards and Shucked was nominated for Best Original Score at the Tony Awards.
Clark’s love of lyrics takes its roots from learning the craft of writing Country songs, which she feels is “some of the best songwriting out there”. She shares a memory of going to evenings at The Nashville Songwriters Association International, where new writers would have their songs assessed by an experienced pro. “You’d put a song in a basket and if it got pulled out the person who was doing the critique would critique your song, and they were always lyric critiques, they were rarely anything musical. As a songwriter learning to write songs in Nashville, the focus is on the lyric.”
Clark explains that the discipline helped to sharpen her focus on writing linear stories through her songs, which was reinforced when she got advice of how to think beyond the songs themselves from her first publisher. “She told me when she listened to songs, she had a music video playing in her head, and the moment she couldn't visualise the music video, that's where the song fell apart,” she tells me.
“When you have teachers like that you learn, ‘OK, how do I tell a story? How do I keep my listener engaged?’ And I think that's what it's about. The musical side is clearly just as important, but when I was coming up in Nashville that wasn't really the focus of the people I was learning from, and I do think a solid lyric drives a song.”
A pivotal artist in Clark’s education, who didn’t make the final cut for her Nine Songs, is Merle Haggard, who she loves both for his prowess as a storyteller and his ability to weave social narratives into songwriting.
“Merle was so good at writing about topical things, songs like “Okie from Muskogee”, which was about what was going on politically in the country at the time," she reflects. "I love “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good”, it makes me think of my grandparents, it makes me think of a better time in a lot of ways. And so many of the lyrics in that, “And are we rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell?”
I tell Clark that she has amazing memory for lyrics. “I love them they get stuck in there, like, ‘With no kind of chance at all for the flag or the Liberty Bell’. Merle figured out he was really a voice for the common man, the working man, and that resonated with me, having two blue collar parents, having a dad who worked with his hands. Merle Haggard's songs really spoke to that.”
As an artist who has written for others as well as herself, I ask Clark how it feels when someone takes on one of her songs, and whether they measure up to her original vision of the story she wanted to tell. “I love it when they make their own. The biggest example of that was probably “Mama's Broken Heart” with Miranda (Lambert). She really Miranda-ised it, she made it a much tougher song production wise than it was. So that was a big swing”.
“A lot of songwriters will say, ‘Oh, I was disappointed when I heard the recorded version of that song’, but I've never had that experience”, she explains. “I've had great artists record my songs, so that might have something to do with it, but when someone else records it there’s always something that I learn about the song that I didn't know before.”
Last month Clarke was recording with Shooter Jennings, and she told him that when she writes, she usually just hears guitar, voice or a piano. Jennings told her he saw Clark as an enabler, who creates foundations for other artists to grow into. “He said, ‘You build these worlds with your songs and then you allow other people to come in and colour them.’ I love to think about it like that. It was really one of the nicest things anybody's ever said to me about my songwriting.”
When it came to whittling down her Nine Songs selections, like many artists, Clark found it tricky to decide her final cut. “It was hard. There are certain songs on the list that would always be on ‘the list’, but I decided, ‘I'm going with stream of consciousness,’ and so that's what I did. But there are songs like “Crazy”, which is always top of the list to me.”
As we talk through each of her choices, recurrent themes emerge, her incredible memory for lyrics and a love of words in song, how a song can bring a moment in a film to life, the power of a voice - Clark sings sections of several of them during our conversation. But the vagaries of being in love is the keystone of the songs that have defined her, whether that’s the first flush of attraction, love being unrequited or the comfort and security of a lasting love.
“Crazy” by Patsy Cline
BRANDY CLARK: “Crazy” touches so many spots for me. I discovered it as a young girl, when I saw the movie Sweet Dreams, the biopic of Patsy Cline’s life. That was my favourite song in the movie, and I fell in love with Patsy's voice and the songs. I just couldn't get enough of that song, and I still can't. Sometimes I think, ‘Is it the song or is it the recording?’ Because the recording of that song is incredible. It's probably both, and it led me to Willie Nelson.
BEST FIT: I didn't realise he wrote it, and that it was originally called “Stupid.”
It was? I didn't know that. My parents were big fans of Willie Nelson, but I just knew “Whiskey River” and “On the Road Again.” I didn't know he had written that song or that he wrote songs for other people. So that opened up a whole other side of Willie that I love.
I love the chord changes, I love the simplicity of the lyric next to the music, and for country music, it's a complicated progression, especially back then, it used some chords and changes that not everybody was using.
I remember hearing Willie talking about writing it in an interview. He was teaching guitar lessons, and he would write songs in the car on the way to teach lessons, but he didn't have any way to record them, so if he remembered them after he was done teaching, he knew it was a good song.
And thank God he remembered that one, because to me, it's an American standard. When I'm feeling ‘What am I doing this for?’ or I don't feel inspired, if I listen to “Crazy” I'm reminded of why.
What is it about the song that reminds you of why you do what you do?
To me, it taps into such a primal spot in our heart; everybody has that, “I'm crazy for trying, I'm crazy for crying and I'm crazy for loving you.” If we're lucky we've all felt that way, and as awful as that is to feel, we’ve felt it. Long before I was even capable of romantic love, there was something where I wanted to feel that and “Crazy” romanticises that, it makes you feel a little less alone in that feeling.
I read that they had to delay the recording for three weeks because Patsy Cline damaged her ribs in a car accident, and when she did the vocal it was in one take.
That doesn't shock me, because it feels like a single performance, and back then they had to do one take, it could have taken her multiple takes, but they couldn’t piece them together.
It’s everything about it, the piano intro gets me, the bass, it's just perfect. When I talk about songs that made me want to write songs, it's always the number one song for me.
“Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell
Which version do you prefer? The original that was on Clouds or the later version on Both Sides Now?
The later version, that might be my favourite sad song of all time.
It's also a lesson to me in arrangement, and how the arrangement changes everything. I had heard it before, but it didn't hit me in the same spot, and the time when I heard it that it really got into my heart was in the movie Love Actually, and the placement of that song is so amazing in that movie.
Was that the Emma Thompson scene?
Yes, when she thinks he's gotten her earrings, but he gets her the Joni Mitchell coaster. She goes in the bedroom and breaks down, and you hear “Both Sides Now.” I went and got that soundtrack on CD the next day and I wore out that song. Sometimes it feels nice to sit in a melancholy place, I think it's the songwriter in me, and there are times where I can listen to that song for a month, not all day long, but when I’m in the car I'll listen to that.
It’s such a brilliant song and when I hear the earlier version I hear a brilliant song, but when I hear that version, I hear a life lived, that understands that song, a voice that understands every word, in an achingly beautiful way.
It’s interesting with the older version of her and the life that she lived, the refrain is still “I really don't know love at all", like love is a mystery that you'll never solve.
The thing for me as a songwriter is when I sit down to write I'm always aiming for songs like “Crazy” or “Both Sides Now”, and I think that's really positive. I feel lucky that those songs exist, because I've not gotten close to those kinds of songs, but to even attempt it, that you have to have that bar.
It's the kind of thing you could listen to if you really needed a good cry, just even the swell of that orchestra in the beginning would start to take me there.
“9 to 5” by Dolly Parton
This is of my faves, and it’s another song I'm always shooting for. 9 to 5 was one of the first movies I remember. I grew up next door to my grandma, and I remember when I was moving to Nashville, or maybe when I had my first band, she was talking to a friend of hers and she told me that the friend said, ‘Well, I always knew Brandy was going to be a singer, because I remember when she was little she'd sing "9 to 5".’ I don't remember that, but clearly I did.
I loved the movie, so there's that memory attached to the song, but as a songwriter I've studied the internal rhymes in that song ad nauseam. “Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen / Pour myself a cup of ambition / And yawn and stretch and try to come to life” - the words ‘tumble’, ‘stumble’, ‘ambition’, it's very smart.
“Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin' / Out on the street, the traffic starts jumpin' / With folks like me on the job from nine to five.” It's just incredible. It's so tight, so I always study the word play in that song.
But the other thing that I really pay attention to is Dolly wrote that on her fingernails.
I read she had acrylic nails on, and she tapped them to get the rhythm.
Yes, to sound like a typewriter. And I think about that when I feel there's something I want to achieve, and I don't know how to do it on an instrument. In fact, recently, I was working on a song for a new potential musical project, and I was thinking, ‘it needs to feel like a court stenographer.’
I spent all this time trying to find that sound and I couldn’t find a good sample, so I just tapped it out myself. And I don't know that I would have thought to do that had I not heard that Dolly Parton story. The fact that she just took her acrylic nails and turned it into music speaks volumes about her talent and her creativity.
She's incredibly underrated songwriter, isn’t she?
I agree. I always say that Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, James Taylor and Carole King, they don't get the same cred, because it's country music. And the other thing is there's all the cleverness of that song, but there's also Dolly speaking about the working class, which always speaks to me. I grew up with working class parents, and I still consider myself working class, out here piecing it together on the road and different projects.
But there's something to that too for that song, that I recognised as a small child, like, ‘Oh, she's talking about my mom’, who did secretarial work. So there's that working class anthem, but it's done with a little pink, it's not grit under the fingernails, it's the pink acrylics that are doing it.
She’s a great storyteller, “9 to 5” is a story of sorts, songs like “Coat of Many Colors”. She’s top of the heap.
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” by Carole King
I didn't realise that Carole King wrote in the early ‘60s.
Yes, and later she put it on Tapestry, it was like “Both Sides Now”. The Shirelles version had a little bit more sheen on it, but that song, much like “Crazy”, is always in my top five. I always love songs that… I'm just going to say it, I love songs that are about sex but never say ‘making love’ or ‘sex.’ That song to me is really about sleeping with someone for the first time and hoping, ‘will you still love me tomorrow?’ There's so much vulnerability in that.
I remember hearing The Shirelles version the night I met my first serious girlfriend and being so struck by it and wondering what would happen next.
She wrote it with Gerry Goffin, and to think that a man wrote that lyric, I love that too. The sensitivity it took for Gerry Goffin to write that, and he clearly had felt that way, because we've all felt that way. It's like you talking about your college girlfriend. That song always gets me.
The first time I ever heard that song, and so many songs when I think about it, was in a movie, in Dirty Dancing, it was The Shirelles version, and I loved it. I loved The Shirelles version, and I loved the Carole King version.
Once again, it’s the chord changes, and Carole King comes at it from the piano, which I always love. I play piano when I write sometimes but I'm not a piano player, so if I get the chance to write with somebody whose first instrument is piano, I always love that. The changes are different, they'll take a simple chord that sounds one way on a guitar, and they'll invert it in a way that on piano it sounds like magic.
And with “Will you Still Love Me Tomorrow?” when I hear it, I think ‘that was written by a piano player’, even though I’ve played it on guitar, and lots of people play it on guitar, it's got those beautiful piano chords.
It’s the mix of lyrics, like ‘Is this a lasting treasure, or just a moment's pleasure? with the uncertainty of the voice, where you can hear someone who's really smitten, but doesn’t know how the other person feels about them.
The one that always gets me is “Tonight with words unspoken / You say that I'm the only one / but will my heart be broken / When the night meets the morning sun?” It gives me chills just saying it.
I didn't realise Joni Mitchell and James Taylor perform backing vocals on it.
I didn't know that. I knew James Taylor was on it, but I didn’t know Joni Mitchell was. Wow, I’ve learned some things already today, that’s so interesting.
“The Chair” by George Strait
I’ve always loved “The Chair”. It was such a different song, because it didn't have a real chorus and I loved that. I get really tired of choruses and for me they're hard to write. I love working with songwriters where their natural instinct is to write a hit chorus, because it's not mine, I think it’s hard to write chorus.
A lot of songwriters have told me that, why do you think that is?
I think it's because I pour so much into the verse, and the verses, in my opinion, are typically more detailed. When you get to the chorus it's like you have to write this thing that's a little more vague, but it can’t be boring, and it really sums it all up for a listener, if the chorus is all they're going to hear. That's what I always think of the chorus. Another songwriter said, ‘the verses are for me, the chorus is for the audience’. You’re trying to give the audience something that's very palatable and I have a hard time with that for some reason.
With the songs I've written that have what I would consider a hit chorus - things like "Mama's Broken Heart" - that was accidental. That was started top down, and so it was supposed to be that way. But “The Chair” made me think, ‘Oh, you can write weird songs.’
I always like a song that's a really short amount of time, like the time it takes to reach over and hold someone's hand, but “The Chair” isn’t that short. It's about a guy who wants to meet a girl, and he says, “Well, excuse me, but I think you've got my chair / No, that one's not taken, I don't mind if you sit here”, like he's trying to figure out a way to start a conversation with her. Then it goes into their conversation and it's very real.
And I felt that even as a young girl, like, ‘Oh wow, this is a real conversation’, and a great big chorus would have pulled you out of that conversation. I learned that from that song, that you should stay in the moment of where the song should be.
It's an interesting way to look at it, with no chorus it's all about the narrative, it’s more like a novelist would write.
Yes, that's it, it's a chapter, exactly right.
How did you discover this one?
I'm sure I heard it on the radio. My parents were country music fans, my Mum in particular, but the only station that came in very clear where I grew up was the country station, so that was what was always on.
The other thing about that song that always got me was the pedal steel hook, and it was interesting that I loved that, because I saw an interview with Dean Dillon where he was talking about Hank Cochran, who he wrote that song with. And one of them, I think Dean, realised, ‘Oh, we're kind of on top of “Crazy”', it was very similar.
Dean said something to Hank Cochran about it and Hank said, ‘Willie won't mind’, because he had just signed Willie to a publishing deal. There was some way that Hank Cochran had Willie Nelson in his back pocket, and so I think that's part of why I like that song, that it was close in its in its structure to “Crazy”.
“You Don’t Know Me” by Jann Arden
So many people have covered this song, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, the list is endless.
I love all the versions. Ray Charles, absolutely, is in my opinion the definitive version, even though Eddy Arnold was the first version, a great version and was a co-writer on it. Much like “Crazy”, I think there's a reason why so many artists cover it, because it's a singer song, and it's also, once again, an emotion we've all felt.
That song to me is as heartbreaking as “Both Sides Now, to be that close to someone and be in love with them romantically and they just see you as a friend. I mean, that’s devastating, and I've been there, we've all been there. I think that's why it resonates for me, and it’s a beautiful chord progression and beautiful melody.
There's that line, at the end, when it's, (sings) “You gave your hand to me, and then you say goodbye / I watch you walk away beside the lucky guy / To never, never know the one who loves you so / No, you don't know me”, that just kills me.
I’ve said it before; my favourite kind of love is unrequited. It's a great place to write from, because there's so much material there and it’s also that you can have unrequited love at any point in your life, but when you're first discovering love, oftentimes it's unrequited.
I think that's why songs like “You Don't Know Me” get in your bones, because it's those early heartbreaking moments, maybe high school or college age love, where you're just discovering it and you have to learn that sometimes, somebody doesn't love you back.
In the lyric, the narrator doesn't put themselves out there and say, ‘I love you’, and it made me wonder, what if they just told this person they loved them?
Then you can lose that friendship. There's always that worry too, because it's never not weird.
It's interesting you said that this is a ‘singer song’, tell me a more about that.
It's one of those melodies that if somebody's a great singer, they want to get a hold of it. Like the line, (sings) “For I never knew the art of making love / Though my heart ached with the love for you” I mean, who wouldn't want to sing that? (Sings) “Afraid and shy I let my chance go by / The chance you might have loved me, too.”
I'm not in good voice! I've been on the road several days and it's early, but it’s this great melody that really showcases your voice, but it doesn't tax your voice. It's just right, it's not too much, it's not too little, it's just perfect. I think it's called prosody, where the melody and the lyric meet up in the perfect place, but it's all of it, the phrasing, all of it is just right.
Why did you pick the Jann Arden version especially, which is from another film, My Best Friend's Wedding.
There's something about her voice, and even though by the time she did it that song had been covered hundreds of times, she just made it her own.
“Desperado” by The Eagles
This is another one of those songs that as a songwriter, you're always trying to write.
This song was when Glenn Frey and Don Henley first realised that they were a songwriting team.
Oh, I never knew that but that makes sense; after writing something like that, you'd have to know you were meant to do something together.
It's the character, a desperado, and we've all had that character in our life, be it a love or be it a friend, that we want to tell, ‘Settle down before it's too late’, like, “Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy / She'll beat you if she's able / The queen of hearts is always your best bet.”
What I always take that to mean is ‘don't go chasing after superficial things, choose love.’ I don't know what that line means, but that's what it means to me, that all those other things are just going to leave you empty, but love won't. Or that being in love will eventually break your heart, but that it's worth more than chasing after money and flashy things.
And that's what's beautiful about a song like that, is that you can interpret it so many different ways, and obviously, Linda Ronstadt’s version is beautiful.
I got see the Eagles at The Sphere in Las Vegas for a friend's birthday and Don Henley sang that song, and he's such a great singer, and such a great songwriter to have written that. That was the first time I've ever seen them, and they were fantastic. Vince Gill was in the band, and Glenn Frey’s son and it was great.
I never saw them when Glenn Frey was alive, or when they were in their original configuration, but it felt really special.
“One Day More” from Les Misérables
Why did you choose this one?
I wanted to include a musical theatre song, because musical theatre is a big part of what I do, and I want to do more of it as my career goes on. With “One Day More”, what I love about that song is what musical theatre does so well, that moves me and that's a challenge to do. Having composed a musical, now I know just how hard it is to achieve what “One Day More” does.
All the story lines are converging in that song, and the characters are singing over the top of each other. It's like a cacophony of voices and instruments and story, and then it boils it down to a simple need. It's ‘one day more’, like they're all converging, and there's a line, “Tomorrow is the judgement day / Tomorrow we'll discover / What our God in Heaven has in store”, and then they all sing that line, “One more dawn / One more day / One day more”. It just gets me.
I love musicals, but I would have to say, top to bottom, if I had to choose one musical, just the music in it, it would probably be Les Misérables. And it's a sad one, it’s kind of like Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now”, I couldn't live in that musical. I think that's also what it is with “One Day More”, is that it starts very small, and then it gets massive, and it just builds and builds and builds.
And then when it climaxes, it's so satisfying in a way that not a lot of long songs are to me. And I don't think a pop song could do that; I think only a great musical theatre song can do that for me.
“Help Me Make It Through the Night” by Kris Kristofferson
This is another one that's always top five for me, this song, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”, “Crazy”, “The Chair” and “You Don't Know Me”. Again, like with “You Don't Know Me”, there's a real vulnerability to it, “I don't care who's right or wrong / I don't try to understand / Let the devil take tomorrow / Lord, tonight, I need a friend”.
It's two people who probably aren't going to be together for any big length of time, or can't be together for whatever reason, it’s just, “Help me make it through the night / Lord, it's sad to be alone”, and I think there's something in that.
Kris Kristofferson was this incredibly good looking, hunky guy, but this is a song where a macho guy is being really vulnerable.
Yes, and I think that for women in particular - but probably for men too - it made them feel like they could be more vulnerable. If a big, hunky guy like Kris Kristofferson can say, ‘help me make it through the night’, I mean, that's real sexy coming from him, and I'm sure that didn't hurt it. Sammi Smith made the famous version of it, which is beautiful, and it's almost sadder coming from a woman.
This song also has my favourite chord in it, which is a minor two chord. I love the two chord in any form, and there's a minor two and a major two in it, and I love the one to the minor two. It's hard for me to not do that in every song, and I don't know a song that does it much better than “Help Me Make It Through The Night.”
The other thing I remember people saying about Kris Kristofferson, and so I really paid attention to it, was that he wrote adult music, and this is a very adult song. So I think that was part of it for me, it was ‘I understand what that means.’ It's really honest, it's raw, it's not perfect in its concept.
I read that the lyrics were inspired by a line from Frank Sinatra, where he was asked what he was believed in and said “Booze, broads, or a bible, whatever helps me make it through the night”, and Kris Kristofferson wrote it off the back of that.
Wow, booze, broads or a bible. I love that, I didn't know that. I feel so lucky being someone who grew up on primarily on country music and that I was exposed to such great songwriting. I can't believe I didn't put a Merle Haggard song in this list, but there's so many songs that I grew up on, like “Help Me Make It Through The Night”, “9 to 5”, “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good”, where the songwriting is just airtight.
I believe that at its best, when it's done right, country songwriting is some of the best songwriting out there.
Brandy Clark is touring the U.S and Europe through October and November
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