The lovely, languid folk songs on By The Way, I Forgive You also offer nuanced looks at life’s everyday complications.
Brandi Carlile has always aimed high. On By the Way, I Forgive You, she aims higher than ever before, this time with her best songs and exquisite production on her side.
She’s not only created some of her most fully realized characters—tough and vulnerable in equal measure—but she’s found her most sympathetic collaborators, making By the Way, I Forgive You the most emotionally direct and revealing album she’s to released to date.
By the Way I Forgive You is a different beast than its predecessor, a record with more texture, shade, and ambiguity: it is clearly the work of a maturing artist and it's all the richer for it.
The album’s a tad awkward, like many projects steeped in the mild tea of sincerity, but By the Way, I Forgive You is the necessary next step in a shrewdly managed career. Brandi Carlile requires no forgiveness from us.
#9 | / | Refinery29 |
#11 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#12 | / | Rolling Stone |
#13 | / | Sputnikmusic |
#19 | / | American Songwriter |
#19 | / | NPR Music |
#22 | / | Noisey |
#36 | / | Thrillist |
#63 | / | PopMatters |
#81 | / | Rolling Stone (2010s) |
#87 | / | Billboard (2010s) |
#3 | / | Esquire (Country) |
#3 | / | Rolling Stone (Country & Americana) |
#4 | / | Popmatters (Americana) |
#49 | / | Uproxx (First Half) |
/ | Billboard (First Half) |