Songfacts®:

• If "The Joke" was Brandi Carlile's declaration of defiance and "Right On Time" a plea for reconciliation, then "Returning To Myself" feels like her sigh of relief, a homecoming after years spent orbiting other people's galaxies. Released on October 24, 2025, it's the title track and lead single from her eighth album, and her first solo outing in four years. Think of it as Brandi stepping off the world's stage, unstrapping her guitar, and saying, "Right then - where was I?"
• The song's story begins in the barn-house guest room of Aaron Dessner's Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, the same pastoral hideaway where Taylor Swift holed up during her Folklore era. Carlile arrived there directly after closing out the Joni Jam at the Hollywood Bowl in 2024, a marathon celebration she helped build around Joni Mitchell's stunning return to performing. The lineup - Elton John, Annie Lennox, Meryl Streep, and of course Joni - reads like the world's most intimidating dinner party guest list. By the time the curtain fell, Carlile was spiritually wrung out. "I was approaching a crash and burn," she told The Independent . "It was all-consuming and existentially complicated."
  
  Carlile didn't even bring a guitar. She went upstairs to Dessner's guest bedroom and sat on the bed looking at a blank wall. "I was so stressed to be that alone," Carlile told Apple Music. She wrote what would become "Returning To Myself" as a poem.
  
  "It didn't have music or anything yet. I was just almost rejecting it. I was almost feeling like, 'OK, this is it. This is a noble pursuit, me staring at this wall," she said. "This is what it means to learn to be alone. I guess I'm evolving right now. I feel like I'm not doing anything at all but just indulging myself and sitting here on this bed."
• It's fitting that a song born out of solitude ends up being about connection. While the title might suggest a meditative retreat, its lyrics twist toward togetherness: the messy, intricate work of human relationships. Carlile asks, in that signature, soul-stirring rasp: why do we worship independence when interdependence is so much more interesting?
  
  "There is no a-ha moment in that song," Carlile said. "It's a contemplation of, 'Is enlightenment aloneness, or is it learning togetherness and sacrificial love?'"
• Carlile co-produced the song with Andrew Watt, who also worked on her 2025 collaboration with Elton John, Who Believes in Angels.
• Carlile plays piano and acoustic guitar, Josh Klinghoffer (formerly of Red Hot Chili Peppers) handles pedal steel and synths, Justin Vernon adds his spectral Bon Iver touches on electric guitar and synths, and Dessner rounds out the sound with organ.
• The black-and-white video, directed by Floria Sigismondi (Katy Perry, David Bowie), shows Carlile performing an acoustic piece while exploring a shoreline, synching with the song's theme of solitary reflection.