Essentials: Top 10 Brandy Clark Songs

As great as a songwriter Brandy Clark is for others, It’s a stark reminder of the cruelty of the Nashville machine that she almost didn’t pursue a career as a solo artist at all: when she moved to Music City and saw how brutal it can be for female artists, she concluded she would be happier just writing for others, only finally deciding to record her debut album when she was 38 (positively geriatric by misogynistic music industry standards) when she had 12 songs that no one else wanted to cut.

Those artists overlooking the absolute gems that ‘12 Stories’ holds were foolish for sure, but at least the outcome of it was we got to see Brandy Clark come into her own as a solo artist. She’s released four brilliant albums so far and here are, in no particular order, what I think are 10 of her most essential tracks – including one standout she penned that’s been performed by another famous artist.

Number 10:‘Dear Insecurity (feat. Brandi Carlile)’ (‘Brandy Clark’ 2023)

There was a ripple of excitement amongst the Americana community back in March of 2023 when Clark posted to her socials that her next album, the self titled ‘Brandy Clark’, would be produced by the venerable Brandi Carlile, and as Clark so perfectly summed it up: “What’s better than one Brandy? Two Brandys!”, adding that while one is “with an ‘I’ and one with a ‘Y’” they are both from the Pacific Northwest and both gay. ‘Dear Insecurity’ is the only true duet the pair do on the album but wow, is it stunning. “Dear insecurity, oh, we meet again don’t try to flirt with me / You’re not really my friend but you take up half this bed / Livin’ rent-free in my head,” opens Carlile, before Clark takes over: “Oh, insecurity / You show up in my mirror, point out the worst in me / You whisper in my ear that my lips are way too thin, too many miles on my skin.” It tells any woman who has ever felt the cruel pressure society puts on them that they are seen, knowing that ultimately the best we can do it try to temper it as the two Brandys join force on the chorus: “If I can’t find a way to get you gone / Can’t we find a way to get along / You’re careless and you’re cruel, and, oh, you’re mindless / Maybe you could try a little kindness / Instead of hurtin’ me.”

Number 9:‘Follow Your Arrow’ (Kacey Musgraves ‘Same Trailer Different Park’ 2013)

While the Kacey Musgraves recorded ‘Follow Your Arrow’ undoubtedly verges on the pop end of the Americana spectrum, that doesn’t diminish its greatness. Co-written by Clark with Shane McAnally and Musgraves (released on debut album ‘Same Trailer Different Park’), the deceptive lightheartedness of the song allows for some lyrics that might be considered subversive by country radio standards to slip through. “If you save yourself for marriage, you’re a bore,” Musgraves opens. “If you don’t save yourself for marriage, you’re a hor…” she adds, the drawn out delivery adding a double meaning, “…rible person.” Given this is a Musgraves song, the later reference to rolling a joint isn’t all that surprising, but the best part of the song is surely the easy acceptance of anyone who feels same sex attraction: “Kiss lots of boys / Or kiss lots of girls, if that’s somethin’ you’re into.” The fact that both Clark and McAnally are proud members of the LGBT+ community makes it all the sweeter.

Number 8: ‘Three Kids No Husband’ (‘Big Day in a Small Town’ 2016)

Co-written with the incomparable Lori McKenna, ‘Three Kids No Husband’ was first released by McKenna on her 2014 album ‘Numbered Doors’, only to be recorded again by Clark herself on 2016’s ‘Big Day in a Small Town’. I’m not going to pretend the versions of the songs are strikingly different, but for me at least, Clark’s version has the edge over McKenna’s as despite the great power of her voice, Clark manages to imbue a tiny bit more vulnerability as she sings of a women just trying to get by day-to-day for her kids. Clark has said her personal favourite lines are the last two, “A real life hero if you ask me / ‘Cause those kids ain’t gonna raise themselves”, saying that “it’s what [the woman] really is.”

Number 7: ‘If These Dogs Could Talk’ (Ashley McBryde ‘Lineville’ 2022)

While ‘Lindeville’ is technically an Ashley McBryde record, the concept album about a fictional Southern town features a number of writers and lead vocalists, and it’s Clark’s contributions that shine brightest. The only track that she takes lead vocals on is the witty, yet oddly touching, ‘If These Dogs Could Talk’, a standout that she also co-wrote. It tells of first a “three-legged beagle” who resides outside the fictional resident of Lindeville Patti’s trailer and “looks like he’s sleepin’, but he knows she’s dealin’” before switching to a “brown mutt named Patience” who waits for scraps from Leroy at the diner, but has found a buddy in him, even if he’s a “meth head who smokes up his paycheck” because after all “everyone needs a best friend.”

Number 6: ‘Pawn Shop’ (‘Your Life is a Record’ 2020)

Taken from ‘Your Life is a Record’, ‘Pawn Shop’ sits as a bit of an oddity amongst the other songs in Clark’s discography as it doesn’t revolve around the narrative of a person so much as it does a place. Clark narrates in the third person as we hear of the people who’ve come into the pawn shop in question, the items they traded for money and just a hint of the story behind that. “That quarter-carat picture-perfect dream / Wasn’t all it was cracked up to be,” she reflects with heartbreaking poetry of someone trading in a wedding ring that once symbolised a lifetime of love. Clark has said she wrote the song in part because she had an uncle who owns a pawn shop, but more than that because of an idea that struck her after reading a line in a book where “there was a guy, the guy at the pawn shop [in the book] who said, “I have the job of telling people that something’s not worth what they think it is.” That really hit me as a song idea.”

Number 5: ‘You Can Come Over’ (‘Big Day in a Small Town’ 2016)

The initial germ of an idea Clark had for ‘You Can Come Over’ was no more than just those four words in the title, it was with the help of Mark Narmore, who came up with the accompanying piano piece, that it finally started to come to life. Clark’s first thoughts for the expanded lyrics were things like “you can come over, but you can’t smoke”, but once she sat down with Narmore and the song’s other co-author, Jessie Jo-Dillon, she was struck with the inspiration that gave her the perfectly nonchalant but still so evocative: “You can come over / But you can’t come in.” If there were any doubt whether the narrator of the story were in denial of the feelings they still have for the person they can’t let inside for fear of falling back into old patterns, the last lines prove they are reluctantly self aware: “So you can come over / But until I get over you / You can’t come in.”

Number 4: ‘She Smoked in the House’ (‘Brandy Clark’ 2023)

After listening to “a lot of Merle Haggard”, and more specifically becoming fixated on ‘Are the Good Times Really Over for Good’, Clark started thinking about her grandparent’s generation and began writing a song called ‘They Smoked in the House’; it just didn’t sit quite right though, and it was only upon realising that the person she was actually writing about her late grandmother Ruth that she changed the pronouns and ‘She Smoked in the House’ was born and magic was created. “She smoked in the house / Burnt holes in the couch / Lipstick-circled butts in the ashtray,” Clark tells us, but it’s not until later that we get to the real gut punch when she confesses that she actually “hate[s] cigarettes” but she “miss[es] all that smoke”. But the most beautiful reminder comes at the end when we’re reminded that people are never gone if we remember them. “She smoked in the house / She’d laugh and crush one out / Light another and put coffee in her cream / And it’s 1984 / And I’m asking for one more / Story when I see her in my dreams.”

Number 3: ‘Hold My Hand (feat. Dwight Yoakam)’ (‘Hold My Hand’ 2016)

Jealousy is a well worn path in terms of the subject matter of songwriting, but ‘Hold My Hand’ is a more gentle and less angry take than the one we’re typically used to hearing. “She walked up and said, ‘Hello, it’s been awhile’ / Don’t think I didn’t notice the nervous in your smile,” Clark sings knowingly, before hinting at the reassurance she craves: “Wasn’t that long ago you were a whole lot more than friends / This’d be a real good time to hold my hand.” Outside of the original on 2013’s “12 Stories”, Clark recorded a second version with Dwight Yoakum after they performed the song together with praise at the 2015 Grammys Awards. Forgotten for a while, the pair finally decided to release the version with Yoakam’s additional harmonies in 2016 as they didn’t want to see it “sitting on a shelf”, with Clark adding: “Music is made to be heard and we definitely wanted this version to be shared.” Indeed, Yoakham’s vocals add an apologetic tenderness that most definitely needs to be listened to be appreciated.

Number 2: ‘Ain’t Enough Rocks (feat. Derek Trucks)’ (‘Brandy Clark’ 2023)

‘Ain’t Enough Rocks’ tackles something that might be considered a challenging subject, to put it lightly: two girls killing their abusive father to escape the torment he inflicts. “She grew up hidin’ bruises, thinkin’ it was love / Bourbon on his breath, poison in his blood / A wolf in daddy’s clothing, he’d sneak into her room / While that small town was sleepin’, God she wished she was too” are some of the most shocking, but powerful words Clark has ever opened a song with. Legendary guitarist Derek Trucks adds slick, almost violent, guitar that sets the scene even further that some things need more punishment than a court of law can provide. Clark commented on the song, saying: “Fortunately for me, I’m not an abuse survivor. But my way into it is that the last verse is ‘Some crimes don’t deserve a jury or a penitentiary.’ I believe that, so I can get into it from that point of view.”

Number 1: ‘Pray to Jesus’ (’12 Stories’ 2013)

From its title, it would be easy to assume that ‘Pray to Jesus’ is pious in nature when, in fact, it contrasts brilliantly the hope for more that religion offers with that of the one people also find when they play the lottery. Written with McAnally, Clark sums it all up succinctly when she dryly states that people “Don’t wanna be buried in debt or in sin”, so instead they “pray to Jesus and we play the lotto” as “there ain’t but two ways we can change tomorrow”. In a very interesting turn of events, ‘Pray to Jesus’ would go on to land Clark and McAnally the job of writing the songs for the musical ‘Shucked’, a tale about life on a corn farm in the rural US written by Robert Horn, which premiered in 2022 and went on to win multiple Tony Awards. “The book writer of the musical heard that song and said, ‘I want this musical to be in that vein.’”