Editor's Letter: "It's Hard Enough Being Human"

"Just before casting my vote in the 2024 election in my hometown in South Carolina, I turned on Brandi Carlile's "The Joke" from her album By the Way I Forgive You, which was written in the aftermath of Donald Trump's 2016 win. I needed to listen to it before I went into the voting booth. Carlile's soaring vocals and poignant lyrics about hope in the face of persecution comforted me as I pulled into the parking lot of a former Walmart turned megachurch that served as my polling station. I parked my Subaru and cried, singing along between quiet sobs."

"I don't need to see how it ends / To tell you that we'll never be here again ... It's hard enough being human."

"Baby, when you wake up, and it wasn't a dreamAnd you're tired of crying, you're too broken to screamShake your fist at the city, let it rip at the seamsBe humanYou're gonna hammer the street with your hands and your feetLet the bitterness die, fall in time to the beatWhen you look in the eyes of the strangers you meetBe human"

A voter in South Carolina played Brandi Carlile's "The Joke" before entering the 2024 voting booth and found comfort in its soaring vocals and lyrics about hope amid persecution. Carlile released Returning to Myself in 2025, an album grappling with time, love, life, death, politics, and the world after a Trump win. The song "Human" acknowledges how hard it is to be human and urges emotional honesty and action. The lyrics call for expressing anger without succumbing to cynicism or bitterness and emphasize the necessity of standing up for humanity and rights while rebuilding community and pursuing progress in 2026.

Read at Advocate.com