Brandi Carlile Revisits ‘Myself’ With ‘Sad Gay’ Versions

Brandi Carlile is going back to the edge of the bed. The 11-time Grammy winner will release Returning to Myself (Sad Gay Version), an expanded reimagining of her critically acclaimed 2025 album, digitally Sept. 25 via Interscope Records/Lost Highway. The new edition recasts all 10 songs from the original through a more intimate lens, with Carlile returning to Long Pond Studio in upstate New York to co-produce four tracks with the National’s Aaron Dessner.

It also features a collaboration with Grammy-nominated composer and electronic musician Jon Hopkins on “Human,” while a new version of Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes” will be available exclusively on DSPs. For Carlile, the project is rooted in a very specific kind of teenage emotional archaeology: what she affectionately calls the “Sad Gay” genre.

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“When I was a teenager, I loved to toy with my own emotions by actively seeking out songs in a genre that very few are willing to call by its rightful name. The ‘Sad Gay’ genre,” Carlile explains. “You don’t have to actually be gay to let it break your heart into a thousand pieces — it will do that against your will. I would sit at the edge of my bed and listen to ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M., ‘Language or the Kiss’ by the Indigo Girls or watch Sinead O’ Connor singing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ while that single black and white tear ran down her face.”

She continues: “I’d listen to Kate Bush singing ‘This Woman’s Work,’ Tracy Chapman’s ‘The Promise,’ the Philadelphia soundtrack, the City of Angels soundtrack. I would do this just to feel myself spiral into pure emotional self-indulgence in ways only music like this could permit, making me a very sad gay.”

That adolescent ritual has become a creative framework for Carlile’s latest chapter. The original Returning to Myself, released in 2025, marked a deeply personal turn in the singer/songwriter’s catalog; now, she’s deliberately pushing those songs back toward the kind of solitary, emotionally overwhelming listening experience that shaped her.

“Returning to Myself has been such a profound journey,” Carlile says. “It’s taken me to places I never imagined and taught me a lot about my disdain for the solitary, as well as my own ridiculous pattern of self-avoidance. Long may it continue.”

“I reimagined this album in this way because I want to be brought back to the edge of my bed again and I want to bring you with me,” she adds. “I rebuilt the whole thing for you and for myself. This one is for us… the sad gays wherever you are.”

The physical edition comes with its own bit of collector appeal: an exclusive signed rainbow vinyl pressing will be available through Carlile’s website for fans who pre-order by Oct. 1, with copies shipping Dec. 11. It’s a one-time pressing.

Meanwhile, Carlile is hardly retreating into solitude. She kicks off the second leg of her extensive The Human Tour tonight with a sold-out show at Portland, Maine’s Cross Insurance Arena. The run includes three nights at Colorado’s Red Rocks plus headline appearances at the All Things Go festivals in New York and Washington, D.C., in September.

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