We know by now that Brandi Carlile is capable of a kind of guttural scream that conjures the rabid, extremely pissed-off-and-not-gonna-take-it-anymore agitator within all of us. Case in point: “The Joke,” or “The Story,” or “Broken Horses.”
Somehow though,
during her 2026 Newport Folk Festival cover of Alanis Morissette’s 1998 single “Uninvited,” she reaches new heights of the ferocious, unhinged Carlile wail that, in the ongoing American shitshow, feels like the catharsis we all need.
There’s something subversive in the way that Carlile turns up the rage quotient onstage at Newport. Morissette, when she released Jagged Little Pillin 1995, was immediately tagged as the rage queen: an angry, bitter, man-hating woman, thanks mostly to the sheer emotion in her hit single “You Oughta Know.” It was an instant point of contention between Morissette and her critics, because woman’s anger was, and still is, constantly up for public regulation.
When Carlile turns “Uninvited” into a full-throated scream, allowing her pristine voice to veer toward the ugly, she’s proffering a dare: Push us too far, and we’ll rip apart our beauty in favor of rage. (The perfectly savage performance on strings from SistaStrings only makes the cover more powerful.)
“I think love and anger and pain are energies that move worlds,” Morissette told Rolling Stone. “They open things up, they start the currents moving again if something’s stuck. If we’re depressed or riddled with anxiety — and they usually go hand in hand — in order to move out of that a tiny bit, maybe conjuring a little anger is going to help.”
Morissette wrote “Uninvited” for the 1998 City of Angels soundtrack, which went on to win two Grammy Awards. Carlile, meanwhile, is launching us into sad gay fall: She will release an expanded edition of Returning to Myself on Sept. 25 via Interscope/Lost Highway, with “Human (Sad Gay Version)” featuring Jon Hopkins out now.
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