Seventeen Nominations, Then a Win
Nashville’s songwriter’s songwriter finally took one home
For most of a decade Brandy Clark was the name on the credits rather than the marquee — seventeen Grammy nominations without a win, while the songs she wrote turned into hits for everybody else. That ended in 2024, when “Dear Insecurity,” her duet with Brandi Carlile, took Best Americana Performance and then Song of the Year at the Americana Honors & Awards.
The record it came from — 2023’s self-titled Brandy Clark, produced by Carlile — got the kind of reviews artists frame. Forbes called it “an Americana masterpiece.” Variety wrote that it “further clarifies that she’s one of America’s treasures.” In 2026 The New York Times Magazine named her, alongside her longtime collaborators Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, one of the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters.
She arrives in West Bend behind the bird (Reprise Records), eleven songs written with McAnally, Jessie Jo Dillon and Sean McConnell, produced by Shooter Jennings at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The first single, “American Roots,” was written in the shadow of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” — and has been pulling mid-song standing ovations out of audiences on the road.
Her other job is writing hits for the rest of Nashville. And her other other job is Broadway: she and McAnally wrote the score for Shucked, which earned nine Tony nominations, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, and a Tony nod for Best Original Score.