How Brandi Carlile Helped Joni Mitchell Heal from an Aneurysm to Sing Onstage Again
Before Carlile's return as SNL's Musical Guest on November 1, find out her new Returning to Myself album features a song about "Joni."
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The last time Brandi Carlile performed on Saturday Night Live, she did it next to friend and collaborator Elton John. On November 1, she'll put in her third solo appearance as Musical Guest, promoting her new Returning to Myself album — and it features a song inspired by another talented friend of hers: Joni Mitchell.
Carlile's song "Joni" is a loving tribute to the folk music icon who has become one of "The Story" singer's greatest friends and inspirations. They've even toured together as Joni Mitchell and the Joni Jam, in which Mitchell presided over a group of rotating musicians all singing her songs.
After knowing each other for several years, the first time Carlile introduced Mitchell onstage was at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022, and it was a complete surprise to the crowd. Mitchell hadn't performed much in the past two decades, and not at all since she was diagnosed with a debilitating brain aneurysm in 2015. After what Mitchell has described as "a return to infancy," she had to relearn how to speak, walk, and play the guitar, making her 2022 performance all the more impressive. The "All I Want" singer even stood and played a guitar solo, with Carlile beaming by her side.
In an essay on Mitchell's website, Carlile wrote about getting the legendary songwriter back on stage, but refused to take any credit for the triumph.
"I want people to know that what happened at Newport happened because Joni decided to come back and play," Carlile wrote. "She decided to stand up and play the guitar. She decided to open her mouth and sing that way. Everything that she has overcome with her mind and her body belongs to her. And all we can do around her, the jammers and her close friends and me, is just love her and believe in her. We haven't done any more than that. She's done all the rest. It's about her."
Read more about Carlile and Mitchell's life-changing friendship below.
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How did Brandi Carlile and Joni Mitchell become friends?
Brandi Carlile first met Joni Mitchell at her 75th birthday tribute concert in 2018, when Carlile performed a duet of "A Case Of You" with Kris Kristofferson in front of Mitchell. But their friendship didn't officially strike up until "a short while later" when Carlile and her wife Catherine Shepherd went to a dinner hosted by the icon.
"She started talking about how she doesn't play music anymore," Carlile wrote of Mitchell. "And that's not a problem, she said, that's not a sad thing, but in her living room were instruments that she wished would still get played."
She asked Carlile if she wanted to put together groups of people to play those instruments and sing and drink wine, and that's how the epic Joni Jams started.
Famous and non-famous friends, musicians and non-musicians made up the guest lists, including Paul McCartney, Harry Styles, Meryl Streep, Chaka Khan. In the intro at Newport, Carlile said that no footage exists of these jams, because they essentially forget that they own phones, so the jams became "the evisceration of the artist's ego in the modern world."
Carlile stayed close to Mitchell through her medical struggle following her devastating brain aneurysm, and supported her right up to and during her return in front of an audience.
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Brandi Carlile Sang "Both Sides Now" with Joni Mitchell at Newport Folk Festival
Lucky attendees at that 2022 festival performance got to hear Mitchell sing her 1969 hit "Both Sides Now." Carlile grinned and harmonized with her through tears as the singer's champion, giving the world a sneak peek into those private Joni Jams.
Watch Joni Mitchell's surprise Newport Music Festival performance with Brandi Carlile here.
In her essay, Carlile described the experience of sitting next to Mitchell as "euphoric."
"It felt like she levitated," she said. "I turned to her at one point and said, 'You're flying, Joni.' I didn't know she was going to do that: she likes taking people by surprise. On another level I had to suddenly remember that this is actually Joni Mitchell. You go over to her house and eat carrot soup and play solitaire and you talk about life or politics and you forget who she is. Then suddenly she's singing 'Big Yellow Taxi' in front of 10,000 people and you are, like, 'F--k me.'"
Two years later, Mitchell and Carlile sang "Both Sides Now" again at the 2024 Grammys, and they later played shows at the Hollywood Bowl.
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Returning to Myself song "Joni" is about their friendship
After the October 2024 Hollywood Bowl shows, Carlile began writing her own solo material with songwriter Aaron Dessner and came to the devastating realization that it was time to move on from the concerts with Mitchell to focus on herself and her family.
"I couldn't bear the thought of not sitting next to her and listening to her sing 'Both Sides Now' again," she told the BBC. "I'd had the best damn seat in the house."
The end of this era inspired her to write a poem with the words, "Returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do, but it's the only thing to do." That became the theme of her 2025 album, which tackles her relationship with her mother and her children, and the fear that her marriage would be in danger if same-sex marriage is overturned.
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The whole album was sparked by the end of her tour with Mitchell, but the song "Joni" is specifically dedicated to her friend.
Lyrics include, "She doesn't suffer fools, she won't make cups of tea, and she doesn't bandage bruised egos or superficial wounds," and "When I tell you I love you, and you tell me OK, that's love in your way."
Mitchell listened to the song "sitting at her desk in her bedroom, putting butterfly clips in her hair," and while she thought the song overall was "great," she took issue with that second line.
"When she heard that, she called me an assh-le," Carlile said. "Because she knew exactly what I meant, and you're not supposed to get Joni Mitchell. She doesn't want to be understood."
The end of their collaboration doesn't mean the end of Carlile and Michell's friendship.
"Oh God, no. If anything, I think the joy that we get from being around each other and having a laugh, knowing that there’s not some big f---ing scary thing in front of us that we’re stressed about, is amazing," Carlile told Variety. Because every time we’ve seen each other for six years, we were just about to do something huge, and right on the edge of something that was going to really challenge both of us, together and separately. That feeling was always in the room, and now it’s really not, so that’s so much fun. I still do not go to L.A. without going up and sitting with Joni and watching TV or having wine or whatever."
Brandi Carlile is Saturday Night Live's November 1 Musical Guest with Host Teller. Watch Saturday Night Live at 11:30 ET/8:30 PT on NBC and Peacock, streaming next-day on Peacock.
