Brandi Carlile‘s voice soars — this time, in heartbreaking fashion — on her new song. “Right on Time” finds things falling apart, not as they should but as expected.
“I’m scared, too / Didn’t mean to take it out on you / I know I always do / You’re the strongest person in the room,” Carlile sings in the first verse, after pleading with someone to come back to her, seemingly after an emotional fight. “Turn back time / Help me to rewind / And we can find ourselves again.”
Actor Courteney Cox — perhaps best known as Monica Geller-Bing on Friends — directed Carlile’s “Right on Time” music video, which begins with a crowd cheering for Carlile, onstage at the end of a show. She walks through backstage to find herself separated by glass from other people walking by while going about their lives.
“It’s not too late / Either way, I lose you in these silent days / It wasn’t right / But it was right on time,” Carlile sings in the chorus, her voice reaching its highest ranges. By the end of the music video, she’s ready to bust through that glass … though, she finds, it’s no longer there (and maybe never was?).
“It’s been nearly four years since we released “The Joke” into the world and it changed our lives forever. It’s taken me a long time to create and believe in another song in the same way,” Carlile writes on Twitter. “Here it is … a little late but “Right on Time.'”
Per Twitter, “Right on Time” — released on Wednesday (July 21) — is the first song Carlile has shared from her next album, In These Silent Days. That record, Carlile’s seventh studio project, is due out on Oct. 1 and available to pre-order now.
Carlile’s most recent album, By the Way, I Forgive You, arrived in 2018. Her forthcoming record “came quicker than I thought,” Carlile shared in April, when promoting her memoir, and is “very dramatic.”
“I think the book led us to some pretty dramatic places and unlocked some doors that maybe I didn’t have access to before in my mind,” Carlile says. “I will say that the vocals are, like, over the top, and I’m a pretty over-the-top singer, so that’s really saying something.”
By the Way, I Forgive You was Carlile’s third straight album to top the Billboard Folk/Americana Albums chart, and earned her two Grammy Awards nominations. Its single “The Joke” notched four additional Grammys nods.
In addition to planning the release of new music, Carlile is planning the return of her Girls Just Wanna Weekend concert vacation event. The Mexico-based festival is set to return in February of 2022 after a COVID-19-induced break in 2021.
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