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Meet Brandi Carlile – Elton John’s Number One Fan
I’ve loved Elton John since I was 11 years old. And Bernie Taupin. They’re the reason why I ever picked up an instrument or wrote a song.
It could be said that if Elton John and Bernie Taupin had a love child, it would be Brandi Carlile.
The multi-Grammy-winning musician has let her Elton fan freak flag fly since she first came across his name while doing a school report on Ryan White. Yes, before she even heard a note of his music, Brandi was captivated by Elton’s generosity of his time and love to the White family as their teenage son succumbed to AIDS. Once she had read the lyrics to Skyline Pigeon – the song Elton sang at Ryan’s funeral – she began checking CDs (and the Philip Norman biography, Elton) out of the library. Soon enough, it was all over…Brandi began lining her bedroom walls with pictures of Elton and devouring everything she could listen to or read about him.
And so, we proudly present just ten of the many ways Brandi has publicly expressed her adoration of Elton…long before their forthcoming collaborative album project, Who Believes In Angels?, ever began.
By John F. Higgins
Brandi Carlile with her prized Captain Fantastic pinball machine.
★ A child of the ‘80s, Brandi entered a school talent show in the 7th grade. Dressed up like something from the cover of Caribou, complete with platform shoes (“E” on one, “J” on the other) and pipe-cleaner sunglasses frames that her mother made, she sang Honky Cat…a song that was out of step with the contemporary songs her classmates were presenting.
★ Brandi has released seven studio albums to date, starting with an eponymous effort in 2005…and on every single one of them there is a “Thank You” to Elton in the liner notes.
★ Brandi has covered several of Elton’s songs in concert: Rocket Man, Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting), We All Fall In Love Sometimes, Skyline Pigeon, Sixty Years On (included on her 2011 album, Live at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony), and Madman Across The Water. When she played the latter song on the Howard Stern Show in October 2021, she explained, “I think it’s really rhythmically unique and there’s something really unhinged about it. It always makes me feel like you’re on the edge of your seat – like the whole thing could fall apart at any moment. And indeed, sometimes it does.”
★ In a powerful moment at the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song ceremony in Washington D.C. last year, Brandi, who had slayed Madman Across The Water yet again earlier in the evening, returned to the song that started it all for her, Skyline Pigeon, which served as a preamble to Ryan White’s sister reading aloud a very moving letter Elton wrote to Ryan 20 years after his passing. Taking inspiration from Elton’s long history of advocacy, Brandi co-founded the Looking Out Foundation, which “amplifies the impact of music by empowering those without a voice”, in 2008.
★ In 2009, Brandi wrote a note to Elton, who she had not yet met nor corresponded with, asking him if he would play piano and sing on the song Caroline for her upcoming album, Give Up The Ghost. He agreed immediately and soon Brandi found herself in Las Vegas watching her idol lay down his parts to her rollicking composition. Right away, a friendship began.
The first time I met Brandi, we clicked immediately. It was like we were a long-lost brother or sister or something. It was just kismet.
★ That same year, Brandi made a video promoting Borders bookstores. While browsing through the music section, she declared:
“Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, [is the] greatest record of all time, possibly, in my opinion. It’s thematic, lyrically and musically. Its production is completely cohesive. It’s absolutely fantastic, so to speak.
“When I find myself having writer’s block, I’ll read [its] lyric book front to back, as if I’ve never heard it before, and try and gain new perspective and I learn something new every time. It’s my favorite record and I love Elton John and Bernie Taupin.”
Elton and Brandi backstage at a Joni Mitchell tribute in 2019.
Elton John and I have been singing together basically my whole life — he just didn't know it.
★ In 2019, Harpers Bazaar magazine invited Brandi to be photographed “in riotous fashion inspired by some of [Elton John’s] most iconic looks”. She had a lot of fun dressing up as Elton, including wearing an upgrade of the “orbit” glasses her mother made for her 7th-grade talent show. You can see the spread here.
★ Brandi sings solo acoustic guitar versions of both Honky Cat and Your Song in the audiobook version of her autobiography, Broken Horses: A Memoir (2021). Elton is mentioned no less than 68 times in the book.
★ Elton invited Brandi to perform Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me with him at the final US stop of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at Dodger Stadium on November 20, 2022. Brandi took the opportunity to pay tribute to both Elton, sporting a Los Angeles Dodgers-inspired stage costume – as Elton had in 1975, and George Michael, emulating every vocal ad-lib he sang behind Elton on their live duet version in 1991.
★ Elton and Brandi, with Andrew Watt producing (as he does Who Believes In Angels?), sang Simple Things on his 2021 album, The Lockdown Sessions. You can read more about this collaboration here.
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