Brandi Carlile on What She Learned from Elton John While Making Their Album (Exclusive)

With 11 Grammys and nine studio albums under her belt, Brandi Carlile has cemented herself as one of the most revered singer-songwriters in music.

She had another banner year in 2025, not only releasing her ninth LP Returning to Myself but also her first collaborative album with longtime friend and collaborator Elton John, Who Believes in Angels?.

Now, she and John, 77, could accomplish something else together — a Grammy win.

The pair is nominated for two 2026 Grammy Awards for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Who Believes in Angels? and Best Song Written for Visual Media for “Never Too Late.”

“We were so excited about it,” Carlile, 44, tells PEOPLE of learning the news.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Carlile opens up about how she plans to celebrate if she and John win at the Grammy Awards, how John Prine’s advice influenced her songwriting and the story behind her song “Human.”

PEOPLE: You and Elton John received two Grammy nominations. How did you and Elton react when you received the news?

CARLILE: I was at Disneyland and I was on the Cars ride with my wife [Catherine Carlile] and kids. I was FaceTiming on the Cars ride with Elton, and we were just screaming. He FaceTimed me. I rode the ride twice, and in two rides, we FaceTimed four times.

PEOPLE: What did it mean for you and Elton to get nominated for “Never Too Late” specifically?

CARLILE: I love the nomination for that song, and I loved the attention that song got because of that whole album. It’s the most Bernie Taupin-influenced lyric. I wrote the lyrics to that song, but with 35 years of being influenced by Bernie and as a writer, that really is a song about Elton. It’s about him, and it pokes fun at him, but it also exalts him in ways that are really important. It talks about his perseverance and his just constant positivity and ability to think forward.

I love seeing any attention or nomination for that song because it’s attention and nomination for who Elton actually is through my eyes — and that’s how Bernie wrote. “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy,” “Made in England” [and] “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” [are all] about Elton, and then Elton had to turn and sing them. I just love hearing Elton say, “You’re an iron man, baby,” about himself.

PEOPLE: As an artist, what did you learn from working with Elton on Who Believes in Angels?

CARLILE: Well, I have a library of chords that I didn’t have before because he’s a composer on a level that’s just hard to even describe. I learned to hold onto my ideas because he’s such a big personality that if you are going to interject — if you have an idea or a contribution — you better be really certain of it. He has a similar energy to Andrew where he’s a boundary breaker. The walls just come down, there’s no ceiling, you just go there. There’s no such thing as being too dramatic, too bombastic or too fantastic.

PEOPLE: How will you celebrate should you win Grammys this year?

CARLILE: I mean, I’ll probably just try to find him, David [Furnish], Andrew [Watt] and Bernie [Taupin] and have a nice, long, four-hour meal where we sit around and crack up at all the amazing s— Elton says.

PEOPLE: You broke down the making of “Human” from Return to Myself for Amex’s Story of My Song. Was that a vulnerable process for you?

CARLILE: Yeah, it was bizarrely self-revealing. And yeah, it was a vulnerable process. For one thing, there were elements of it that I thought were just really cool in the programming, and I didn’t want to get any of the details of how that breakdown is done wrong. So I was already on my heels a little bit. And then the questions just were really well researched in depth, and they made me think. The best interviews are the kind where you’re realizing the answer as you’re giving it. It’s so neat that Amex found a way to do it in a way nobody else has.

PEOPLE: You also discuss how the songs for Returning to Myself came to you when you were alone as opposed to working collaboratively in Amex’s Story of My Song. Why do you think that happened this time around?

CARLILE: I’d say [it has] a lot to do with where I was in my life. And I’ve always been pretty open to listening to the muse because when my ability to write songs is flowing, it’s impossible to ignore. And then the rest of the time it’s just not flowing. There are times, sometimes even a year or more, where I’ll be like, “Do I know how to write songs?” I don’t know.

I’m not sure what I would do if I sat down to write a song where it’s not possible. And then when it is, it’s all consuming. You really have to stop everything. And it just so happened that it wasn’t really in community as much as it’s always been.

PEOPLE: John Prine’s advice had a big impact on “Human.” How so?

CARLILE: Well, John Prine is a North Star for me and so many other Americana singer songwriters, just root songwriters and songwriters in general.

But I always love how whatever John is saying, whether it’s a really profound thing, whether he’s talking about the prevalence of drug addiction and the lack of help and support in our veterans community, whether he’s talking about ageism and the fact that people become isolated when they age because of a prejudice against aging people, there’s one or two lines in there where you feel a tendency to laugh.

That’s the John Prine element to songwriting that I’ve been able to most tap into. And in “Human,” it would have to be where it says, “You’re going to have a heart attack / And they won’t thank you / They don’t make awards for that.” It’s sad, but it’s also a good humored understanding of humanity and how we could accidentally work ourselves to death.

PEOPLE: You worked with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Aaron Dessner and Andrew Watt on “Human.” What did you learn from them?

CARLILE: I learned a different thing from each of them. I learned this sonic nuance from Aaron and Justin. I learned this bravery, this reckless abandonment that comes from Andrew, where it’s no ceiling, no walls. And Justin and Aaron, they really lean into and tend to understand, in a mystical way, the femininity in that song. We have a lot of intersections of admiration for people like the Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt — and particularly Bonnie — made her way into that song because of those two guys.

PEOPLE: I don’t think it just applies to being an artist, but any career at this point.

CARLILE: I totally agree. Yeah. Not even to give it a gender, but to being women and realizing that the climb is twice as steep and the days are twice as long — and the pay’s half as much as that too.