Brandi Carlile

After 12 yeArs And five records, Brandi Carlile was done trying to please other people by the time she wrote 2018’s By the Way, I Forgive You. Inspired by Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Carlile decided to write about personal issues like being a queer mother and the pressures of marriage. That approach earned her a top-five chart debut with more nominations than any artist, except for Drake and Kendrick Lamar. “I never thought in a million years this would hit the mainstream like it has,” says Carlile. “I’m a 38-year-old gay-mom chicken-farmer lady. I could care less what people think is cool.” Carlile grew up in rural Washing ton, raised by her mom, a country singer, and as a teen worked as a backup singer for an Elvis i mpersonator. She broke through with 2007’s sweeping ballad “The Story,” but she made some commercial compromises early on: “I’d put a bunch of harmonies on a chorus, or repeat a line I didn’t want to repeat.” She was done with that by her latest LP. One sign it worked? Carlile played Mitchell’s 75th-birthday concert. “I told her how much she meant to me, and she said, ‘Right on, man!’ I’ll never forget that Joni Mitchell called me ‘man.’ ”

JONATHAN BERNSTEIN