VIDEO: Brandi Carlile Talks Mortality, Stardom, and Embarrassing Moments on Stage

When it comes to her career, superstar singer and songwriter Brandi Carlile has checked just about every box on her list. Fans flock to see her live, critics praise her genre-bending albums, and her musical idols — including Elton John and Joni Mitchell — can’t wait to collaborate with her on stage and in the studio. The 44-year-old artist has found long-lasting success in a notoriously fickle industry, earning more Grammy Awards than she can count on both hands while staying true to herself and her artistic vision. She’s built an incredible career — not to mention a massive compound in rural Washington where she lives with her family and some of her bandmates.

So, when Carlile stopped by the Stern Show on Wednesday morning to perform live in the studio and chat about her introspective new album “Returning to Myself,” which tackles everything from death and isolation to divine intervention, Howard had a litany of questions. He was curious where Brandi’s recent journey of self-discovery had taken her and what, if anything, she still had left to accomplish.

“At this point in your career, are you 100 percent satisfied?” Howard asked. “Or is there something more?”

“Why do you come right out of the gate with like the best existential question?” Brandi laughed before digging into a more serious answer. “I do feel 100 percent satisfied, and it scares me sometimes because I feel like all these little kid milestones have sort of been crossed and met,” she continued. “[But] I still get really nervous and anxious about getting on stage and putting out albums, and I do care more than I like to admit what people think.”

“So, there must be something left,” Carlile concluded.

Brandi chatted with Howard for nearly an hour before she and her band performed live in the Stern Show studio. Their conversation covered a plethora of topics, from her upcoming performances on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony to Brandi’s most embarrassing stage moment ever, which involved a dirty joke from “Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny” and a crowd that didn’t get the reference.

“I thought that everyone had seen that movie,” she began. “I’m playing in front of like a thousand middle-aged lesbians — these are not Tenacious D fans — but I get up to the microphone and go, ‘Okay, you’ve seen my rock slide. Now wait until you see my cock push-up.’”

“And a silence hits the crowd. No one reacted. No one got it. No one could figure out why Brandi Carlile just said ‘cock push-up’ on stage,” Brandi recalled. “And I actually lose years of my life every time I tell that story.”

Stage faux pas aside, Howard and Brandi’s conversation frequently returned to the realm of the philosophical and introspective. “Is there any part of you that might envy the career of a Taylor Swift?” Howard asked her at one point. “Is there some part of you that says, ‘I gotta get to that level’?”

“No. There would be except I couldn’t take it if anybody didn’t like me. I just don’t do well with not being liked,” Brandi admitted before praising Taylor. “She’s built in a way that she can take that juxtaposition, you know? She can take a few people misunderstanding her or having judgements against her — I can’t take that.”

Howard saw his guest’s point. “I have the thinnest skin on the planet,” he laughed.

“Me too,” she responded before explaining how wounded she had felt recently after reading a few negative comments about her collaborations with folk legend Joni Mitchell. “That one set me back a little bit. I had to rethink some shit.”

In the end, the “Both Sides, Now” singer helped Brandi find the necessary perspective. “I remember talking to Joni about it, and she was like, ‘Brandi those people have always been there. They’ll always be there,’” Carlile recalled.

Before saying their goodbyes, Brandi and her band wowed Howard with an in-studio rendition of “Human,” a haunting track off her new album that takes an unflinching look at mortality.

“We’re just here for this flash, this blink of an eye, such a short period of time— and we have to find a way to be happy no matter what the landscape looks like,” Carlile said of the meaning behind the song. “We just have to find a moment of happiness in every day if we possibly can because every civilization since the beginning of time has believed it’s living through an apocalypse.”

Brandi Carlile’s eighth studio album “Returning to Myself” is out now. See her on “The Human Tour,” including a second night added at Madison Square Garden.