Appearing Thursday on Ellen DeGeneres'
daytime talk show, Grammy-winner Brandi Carlile said that DeGeneres
had inspired her to come out.
Carlile won three Grammys on Sunday for
her album By the Way, I Forgive You and the song “The Joke.”
The 37-year-old singer-songwriter first
publicly came out in a 2002 interview with The Los Angles Times.
Carlile and wife Catherine Shepherd are raising two daughters.
After performing “The Joke,”
Carlile was encouraged by DeGeneres to “tell everyone a little of
your speech that you gave when you won your Grammy.”
“I basically just outlined that I
came out of the closet when I was 14 years old … because of you,”
Carlile said.
“I never attended any parties and was
never invited to a dance or anything like that. I basically said
that to be embraced by such a loving and enduring community was the
dance of a lifetime,” she added.
“It's a brave thing to do too,”
DeGeneres said of Carlile's coming out prior to release of her first
studio album. “Most people that are performing, they worry about
their careers. It's a brave thing for you to be open and out.”