“And the joke’s on them,” Brandi Carlile howls in her thunderous song “The Joke.” It’s the backbone of her 2018 album, By the Way, I Love You—how has it already been eight years—and features one of the best vocal performances ever on a record. In light of recent events, I’ve found myself wandering back through the halls of the piano ballad, trying to find a way out of the most suffocating blackness I’ve ever endured. The tell-tale drums pitter-patter like an adrenaline-fueled heart that only knows how to feel too much. The strings weep with sharp, painful heaves of true misery. Despite the arrangement’s heaviness and the lyrics downtrodden nature, Carlile finds a glimmer of hope through all of the bad.
“They can kick dirt in your face, dress you down, and tell you that your place is in the middle when they hate the way you shine,” Carlile encourages the listener. Fighting to stay alive might be like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, but it’s not completely insurmountable. It’ll take some time to rest, to heal, and to gather the strength to keep living. She continues the brutal honesty in the second verse, singing, “They come to kick dirt in your face, to call you weak and then displace you.” Her words act as both stabbing knives all over your body and aloe vera to the soul and mind. Healing isn’t a linear journey. Highs and lows are dots of Morse Code, sent by a ship in peril on the wild, open seas.
When I think about my life, memories come to me like fractured colors in my brain. Even a broken stained-glass window always remembers its beauty. Carlile delivers the punchline in the chorus, as she fires a warning shot, singing, “Let ’em laugh while they can / Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind.” Chattering teeth don’t know anything other than to keep gnashing away at air. “The Joke” stunningly captures the inevitable climb to the mountaintop. There might be more rocks hurled your way, but if you stay vigilant and protect yourself, everything will be okay.
