Allison Russell Recruits Brandi Carlile to Reimagine “You’re Not Alone”
Photo by Aimsel Ponti
Ahead of a run of August and September U.S. shows together, Allison Russell and Brandi Carlile have shared a moving new collaboration. The duo’s “You’re Not Alone” reimagines the Russell-penned and -produced track of the same name from Songs of Our Native Daughters, the 2019 debut album from Russell, Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla as roots-music supergroup Our Native Daughters, and is Russell’s first release since her Grammy-nominated 2021 debut album Outside Child.
Russell and Carlile’s rendition turns the rustic Songs of Our Native Daughters closer into a sweeping, almost cinematic experience, wringing added poignance from the pair’s vocal interplay—a moving reinforcement of its central assurance. Where the original employed a gradual build, this new version moves with more urgency, working through its emotional beats like there isn’t a second to waste. A lush string arrangement by SistaStrings (Monique and Chauntee Ross) and Larissa Maestro elevates things further, rising and falling with Russell and Carlile’s voices, like a sonic representation of the shared strength the song shines a light on.
Russell says of the song in an eloquent statement:
We are not alone.
We are not what we have lost.
We are more than the sum of our scars.
We are the dust of the stars, the bones of the Earth, the breath of the void, the expanse of our imaginations, the arc of art, the love in our hearts.
We lift each other up.
We are the “Beloved Community” every time we choose to be. Our Circle is battered and bloody but still, whole. None above, none below—our one human family—equal under the listening sky.
I believe what Alice Walker wrote:
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Every child deserves to be loved and protected. Our families with LGBTQIA+ parents are just as precious.
No one should be forced into the sacred role of parenthood against their will.
Human Rights are worth fighting for.
We’ve come a long way but we must go farther still.