Songfacts®:

• Patsy Cline is a big influence on Carlile, who wrote and recorded this song for her third album, Give Up The Ghost. When Songfacts asked her if she was channeling Cline on this track, she replied: "I was thinking more along the lines of Radiohead. But when I sing, it brings that Patsy Cline/Roy Orbison element to it no matter what I do. But I think, eerily, Radiohead and Patsy Cline have more in common than most people fully understand."
• A "pride and joy" is an affectionate name for a child. The song is written from the perspective of a child who is now older and has lost a parent.
  
  Brandi Carlile shed some light on the inspiration in 2018 with a very revealing Facebook post where she explained how her father died when she was 12 after he was shot by her uncle for cheating on him with his wife. "I'm sure you wouldn't have sacrificed that time with me if you had known that it would end so soon," she wrote. "I was so hurt then but I held it in because it didn't seem proper that I'd be mad at you after you were already gone."
• "Pride And Joy" is one of Carlile's most popular live songs. She started performing it in 2007, two years before it was released. When it came time to record it for the Give Up The Ghost album, she decided to make the studio and live versions different, adding a string arrangement for the version on the album.
• Along with the rest of the Give Up The Ghost album, "Pride And Joy" was produced by Rick Rubin, who became a mentor to Carlile. When she produced Tanya Tucker's While I'm Livin' album in 2019, Rubin, the man who coaxed Johnny Cash into the modern musical era, offered her some sage advice that helped bring the project to fruition.
• Benmont Tench from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played organ and piano on this one. Paul Buckmaster did the string arrangement.