“I’ll never hit the big time without you,” the inimitable Brandi Carlile sings to her daughter, Evangeline, in not one but two live videos that have been making the rounds on social media for her song, “The Mother,” which came out in 2018 on her album By The Way, I Forgive You, which won the Best Americana album at the 2019 Grammy Awards and was nominated for Album of the Year the same year.
Brandi is a celebrated and talented country and Americana powerhouse who has been writing hit songs since 2005, and it’s touching to see her daughter hanging on every word that her mom has written for her with a precocious sort of attention.
In the first video, her daughter Evangeline, who is “fair and she is quiet, Lord, and doesn’t look like me,” starts the video bubbling with youthful energy. But it is not long before she is listening intently to the way that “She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep.
"She filled my life with color, canceled plans, and trashed my car/But none of that was ever who we are.”
Brandi Carlile is brave (and smart) enough to share her life with the world
The second video, which was recorded three years later for Farm Aid 2020 On The Road, finds Evangeline sitting next to her on a wall out in the woods, swaying gently back and forth to the song, a bit older and even more invested.
Songwriters like Brandi Carlile have the chance to pass on their legacy and celebrate the ones that they love in song, and you can see the budding interest in art and celebration in her daughter Evangeline’s wise eyes. It is a personal touch, allowing us a small but special look into Brandi’s personal life: a look behind the curtain so to speak, which Brandi’s honest and moving songs have always been.
But there is also a more universal official video for the song, released in tandem with her album, where mothers are walking their kids to the school bus and through the city, coddling and even breastfeeding their young.
Songs always have their compelling subjects, some of which are more hidden and mysterious than others. But Brandi Carlile invites us into her life through these videos, which, even years later, still have the same powerful impression of familial love and universal meaning. “Oh, but all the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time, From inside of the ages through your eyes.”
One has to wonder how this kind of creative love will play out in her daughter Evangeline’s life. Will she become a celebrated songwriter, like her mother, or some other great thing? Only time will tell.