Behind the History and Meaning of the Song “The Joke” by Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile‘s song “The Joke” is one of the most beautiful tracks written this millennium.

Like its composer, the work becomes more and more classic in meaning with each passing day. On it, Carlile boasts a woodgrain voice, creaky and bright, sad and hopeful, knowing and incendiary.

At the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, “The Joke” was nominated in four categories. It later won Grammy Awards for Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance. Following those wins, it debuted at No. 1 on the February 23 Billboard Rock Digital Song Sales chart.

To understand the song—its meaning, its history, the inspirations that birthed it—let’s dive deep into it.

Origins

“The Joke” was released on November 13 in 2017 as the lead single from Carlile’s then-new album, By the Way, I Forgive You. That record has followed the lead of the single and become a classic, as well, earning Carlile several Grammys and propelling her to international stardom.

The song’s meaning is rooted in the story of those who are criticized and beaten down. But, as the singer makes clear, often it’s those same people who have the last laugh.

Said Carlile in an interview, “There are so many people feeling misrepresented [today] … So many people feeling unloved. Boys feeling marginalized and forced into these kind of awkward shapes of masculinity that they do or don’t belong in … so many men and boys are trans or disabled or shy. Little girls who got so excited for the last election, and are dealing with the fallout. The song is just for people that feel under-represented, unloved, or illegal.”

The song came about when Carlile was talking with music producer and the song’s co-writer, Dave Cobb. The two were talking about her most famous song at that time, “The Story,” which was by her longtime collaborator Phil Hanseroth, known as one of the two twins along with his brother Tim, for the album of the same name.

“It started off with Dave insinuating that we haven’t had a vocal moment like ‘The Story’ since, well, ‘The Story’ […] we all went home that night and I was like, who tells you to rewrite a song that you wrote a decade ago?” added Carlile in the same interview. “But it just kept nagging me—like the truth does, you know.”

Cobb

The producer, Dave Cobb, talked about that moment and its meaning, as well. He played her An American Trilogy by Elvis Presley during a recording session. Thinking about that time, Cobb noted, “I was playing her Elvis Presley’s American Trilogy…there’s something magical about that recording. I mean it’s the way it affects you; the way it’s big in the chords, just pulling every single emotion out of you. So I played that, and then she wrote ‘The Joke.‘ [laughs] I played her one of the greatest songs of all time, and then she wrote one of the greatest written since that one.”

Background and Broken Horses

Carlile grew up in rural Washington, taming horses and living in trailers. She knows what it’s like to feel marginalized, less than. Today, she’s married to her wife, in a same-sex marriage. This, of course, creates its own sense of alienation in an era when those rights are routinely threatened by areas of government as high as the United States Supreme Court.

This was the backdrop with which she wrote her now-infamous tune.

In fact, Carlile talks about all this meaning and history in her best-selling memoir, Broken Horses.

“I woke up the next morning with ‘The Joke’ beating at the inside of my best, trying to get out like a bird,” she writes. “It was a day off. Everyone was gone except my cellist, Josh. I ran into the kitchen and told him we had to go. He threw the ingredients for the sandwich he was making into a Ziploc bag and followed me blindly into an Uber. On the way to the studio, I called Eddie the engineer, and told him I was coming down. I asked him if he’d meet me and let me in. He did.

“When we got to RCA Studios around ten in the morning on a Sunday, it was pitch-black. I gave Josh four chords and asked him to go to a corner of the room with just his cello and play them for as long as it took. Two of the chords Dave had given me: D to A minor. I was hearing a verse melody from one of Phil’s songs from fifteen years ago that we never wrote.

“I thought about Christopher and his T-shirt. I thought about our sneering president and the way he laughed at people who were suffering. I thought about the little girls who wanted a female president. I thought of Aleppo, Jordan, Iraq, and all the beautiful children from the Story Campaign living their lives in refugee camps. I thought about mothers fleeing bombs and violence, carrying their babies on their backs. And I thought about Jesus.

“You don’t have to like that Jesus is my home base. You can use it to discredit me in the name of ALL the harm Christianity has done. In fact, every single thing I mentioned above has been impacted negatively by Christianity in one way or the other. I am okay with that perspective and I think it’s healthy. I, too, have been impacted negatively by it. But something mystical brings me back time and time again to the revolutionary gospel of forgiveness.

“I wrote ‘The Joke’ in a half hour. It’s not a song as much as the acknowledgment of a promise.

“I went out an all-hands-on-deck message to everyone. They all came in—Dave, the twins, Chris, and Shooter [Jennings]. I couldn’t wait to play Dave ‘The Joke.’

“‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s the best song you’ve ever written.’

“The real truth is that we all wrote it. The song wouldn’t exist without Dave and the twins.

“By the Way, I Forgive You had one more life-changing day in store for me.”