A Rooftop Conversation Downtown, Brandi Carlile and Cameron Crowe Talk Returning to Myself at the Grammy Museum
The 11-time Grammy winner sits down with the filmmaker on the Grammy Museum rooftop October 12, with a performance to follow.
Brandi Carlile will spend Monday, October 12, on the Grammy Museum’s Ray Charles Rooftop Terrace downtown, talking through her album Returning to Myself, her creative process and her career with the filmmaker and author Cameron Crowe. The evening runs from 7:30 to 9 p.m. and ends with a special performance. The museum lists the evening as sold out. Velvet also covered The Beatles Through George’s Lens, Olivia Harrison and Cameron Crowe Talk The Third Eye in Culver City.
The record has a Los Angeles thread. Carlile made it with three co-producers, Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon, sometimes separately and sometimes together, Variety reported. She worked with Dessner at his Long Pond studio in the Hudson Valley and with Watt at Henson Studios in Hollywood. It was her first solo album in four years and came out October 24, 2025, through Interscope and the revived Americana imprint Lost Highway.
Its ten songs include “Joni,” written for her friend and hero Joni Mitchell, and an all-new recording of “You Without Me,” a version of which appeared on her duo album with Elton John, Variety reported. When she announced the record, Carlile described its title song as an open question. “I think people are going to hear that song in different ways,” she said, according to Variety. “Some are going to hear it as a call to return to themselves. Some are going to hear it as a justification not to. And I love that about it because it is a deeply conflicting feeling.”
The museum’s listing calls it a No. 1 album. Its title track won song of the year at the Americana Honors and Awards at the Ryman in Nashville on September 16, Variety and Rolling Stone reported. Accepting it, she told the room that everyone needs to return to themselves at some point, and then get right back out again to find their people, Variety reported. Earlier in the year she sang “America the Beautiful” before the Super Bowl LX kickoff in Santa Clara, Variety reported, and she toured arenas on The Human Tour, which the museum calls her largest arena tour so far.
The Grammy Museum bills her as an Oscar nominee, an 11-time Grammy winner and a two-time Emmy winner.
