Watch an Emotional Elton John & Brandi Carlile Record Their Forthcoming Album

Longtime friends Elton John and Brandi Carlile have joined together for Who Believes in Angels?, a new studio album the pair recorded over 20 days starting in October 2023. Interscope will release the set on April 4, but the title track was released on Wednesday (Feb. 5).

The pair wrote and created the album with John’s long-time co-writer Bernie Taupin and producer Andrew Watt. The quartet are nominated for an Oscar for best original song for “Never Too Late,” the end-title track to John’s documentary, Elton John: Never Too Late, which is included on the album.

“As my Farewell tour came to an end, I knew I wanted to make a new album with Brandi, I wanted to shift gears and do something different from anything I’d done before,” John tells Billboard. “I have always found Brandi so inspiring, our friendship was so close, and I just had the instinct that we could produce something really amazing. Creating Who Believes in Angels? was challenging, and I had a lot of self-doubt, but alongside Bernie Taupin and Andrew Watt, we ended up writing 10 songs in 20 days and it was one of the most joyous and exhilarating experiences I’ve ever had in my life.”

Billboard has an exclusive look at the emotional, candid trailer that captures the recording of the album and the vulnerabilities and frustrations that gripped John as the quartet worked at Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound Studios.

“I’m 76 and I want to do something different. I don’t want to coast,” John says. But the recording sessions proved difficult, given that John was exhausted from finishing his final world tour. “I was a nightmare. Angry, I was tired, I was irritable,” John says, as he throws his earphones down in frustration and Watt snaps at him for being so “impatient.”  

“Elton is prone to moments of insecurity, especially when the stakes are high,” says Carlile, who has “idolized” John since she was 11. She admits to “having a hard time connecting to Elton” at times during the process and wondering why he wants to make the album given that is it radically different from how he has created before.

Throughout the trailer, the tension escalates, as John gets so frustrated, he tears up a lyric sheet and throws it on the floor, declaring, “I’m going home,” and Watt directs the crew to cut the mics.

But then John realizes that Carlile, Taupin and Watt are depending upon him and suddenly the process gels and the creativity begins flowing again. “We’ve made an album that I think is spectacular for all the ages,” Carlile says. “My life has been taking me to this album the whole time.”  They are joined in the studio by Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chat Smith, renowned session bassist Pino Palladino and Pearl Jam guitarist Josh Klinghoffer on the album that spans rock, pop and Americana.

As the trailer wraps, John begins crying, but this time it’s happy tears.

“Who Believes In Angels? feels like going into another era and I’m pushing the door open to come into the future,” John said in a statement. “I have everything I’ve done behind me and it’s been brilliant, amazing. But this is the new start for me. As far as I’m concerned, this is the start of my career Mark 2.”

“I’m still reeling from the fact that I got to do it,” added Carlile. “I think all ships rise with Elton John’s standards for songwriting, and it was an incredibly challenging and inspiring environment to work in, everybody throwing in ideas, everybody listening to everybody else’s ideas. It felt like a family. The world is a wild place to live in right now. It’s hard to find peace and triumph. It’s a radical act to seek out joyful and euphoric happenings. And that is what this album represents to me.”

Other than Taupin, John has seldom worked with collaborators: he and his musical hero the late Leon Russell made two albums together with T Bone Burnett and he has collaborated with lyricists like Tim Rice for musicals, including The Lion King and Aida.

Fans who pre-order Who Believes In Angels? are eligible for a chance to buy tickets to An Evening with Elton John & Brandi Carlile at the London Palladium on March 26.

Who Believes In Angels? tracklisting: