Brandi Carlile ‘Felt Like a Biographer’ Writing Tanya Tucker’s ‘Bring My Flowers Now’

Brandi Carlile co-produced Tanya Tucker‘s most recent album, While I’m Livin’, and co-wrote several of the songs on the project including “Bring My Flowers Now,” which was released as the fourth single from the record. That song is the only one on the album that Tucker co-wrote, and Carlile told Zane Lowe on Apple Music that she “felt like a biographer” while writing for the project, specifically while working on “Bring My Flowers Now.”

“I felt like I was writing about someone else’s regret,” Carlile said of the song. “I don’t have a past drug addiction and loose ends to tie up with parents that have crossed over. It was very much her story and my groove with Tanya was listening to her and interpreting what she had to say and helping her say it. She just wasn’t willing to say it for all these years. She needed to just go away in a way that was communicative, and until we met each other and found each other, she didn’t feel that she had a conduit anymore for who she really was. And when we made this record, it’s a whole record of it.”

Carlile and Tucker wrote “Bring My Flowers Now” with Tim Hanseroth and Phil Hanseroth and the song earned Tucker her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song after 14 nominations throughout her career. Carlile told Lowe that Tucker doesn’t consider herself a songwriter, but she did her best to take Tucker’s words and turn them into lyrics.

“This song in particular, she wrote this song and she doesn’t think she’s a songwriter,” Carlile explained.”So she says things, amazing things, and sometimes they ride and I listen and then I try to take her regret and turn it into something that can help her and help other people and bring my flowers. I love it because it conjures up feelings of who we’re all thinking about right now. People that are in a demographic where they’re at risk for this disease, and yet we can’t bring them flowers right now, but we can call and check in instead of sitting around and talking about how much we wish that we had.”

While I’m Livin’, released in August 2019, was Tucker’s 25th studio album and won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album. In addition to Best Country Song, “Bring My Flowers Now” was also nominated for the all-genre Song of the Year.