Songfacts®:

• In this uplifting folk song, Brandi Carlile encourages us to resist the world's efforts to harden our hearts and instead stay gentle. The Americana singer was contemplating the trajectory of life where gentleness is lost and regained.
  
  "It just seems like this big rainbow of a lifeline where you start out so gentle and funny and innocent, and you don't care if somebody thinks you're naive. You ask whatever questions you want to ask. And then, at some point, you sort of shut it down, and you become a bit brutal. And then you get gentle again," she told Stereogum in 2021. "And it's like why can't you just stay gentle? What is it about the world that sort of steals our gentleness and then gives it back to us just in time for us to realize that we should've just stayed that way?"
• Carlile was also inspired by artists like Mavis Staples, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, and Joni Mitchell - "the beautiful souls that gave us the narrative of our lives, whether you're a musician or not, they are all in this place of gentleness."
  
  Mitchell, in particular, is a big influence on the singer as both a performer and a friend. Carlile performed her classic 1971 Blue album at Carnegie Hall in 2021, and featured the folk icon as a surprise guest during her set at the Newport Folk Festival the following year. Shortly after, the pair announced a special "Echoes Through the Canyon" concert weekend set for June 2023 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Carlile's native Washington state. It marks Mitchell's first headline concert in 23 years.
• This appears on Carlile's seventh studio album, In These Silent Days, which was written during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It won Best Americana Album at the 2023 Grammy Awards, where it was also nominated for Album of the Year.