One of the year’s least expected samples on a record started with an email. A few months ago, Bonnie Raitt received a note from Bon Iver auteur Justin Vernon. Raitt was already familiar with Vernon, especially after he covered her 1991 standard “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” with a bit of “Nick of Time” tacked on, a dozen years back. This time, Vernon was circling back to the latter song, but in a very different way.
As Raitt recalls, “Justin said, ‘I’m working with this artist you may or may not know,’” and that said artist, as Raitt remembers him saying, “had written a song about being cognizant of maybe running out of time, and thinking about having a baby, and is this the right time, and how that impacts her? And he said, ‘I turned her on to your music, and we really would like to use part of ‘Nick of Time.’” Raitt’s 1989 song, which launched her comeback, addressed similar heavy and personal issues.
Luckily for Vernon, Raitt was already familiar with the artist in question — Charli XCX — and thought the idea was, in her word, “fantastic.” Vernon sent her a link to a nearly finished track, “I Think About It All the Time,” which uses the featherbed sonics of “Nick of Time” as a foundation for a more beat-heavy track showcasing Charli’s vocals (“I think about it all the time/That I might run out of time/But I finally met my baby/And a baby might be mine”). “It’s hard to know exactly which parts they used,” says Raitt of what is likely the first time anyone has sampled any of her records. “It mostly sounds like her, but it has a different tone to it, and I know there’s one isolated part of my voice. But they did a really artful job — I was very honored.”
The Charli track, which wound up on her new remix record, Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, isn’t just a one-off. You’ve probably heard of the so-called “Joni Mitchell Renaissance,” in which the legend is being discovered by a new generation. So, is the Charli track the latest of many signs that we’re heading for, well, a Raittaissance? “I’m just a working musician,” Raitt says. “But it’s been a remarkable blooming time for me.”
If the current Raitt moment had a launch date, it was probably early last year at the Grammy Awards. In the show’s pre-telecast, Raitt walked away with awards for American Roots Song and Americana Performance. She assumed her trophies would end there, especially since her self-penned “Just Like That” was up for Song of the Year alongside tunes by Taylor Swift, Lizzo, Adele, Harry Styles, and Beyoncé, among others. But to Raitt’s — and the world’s — astonishment, presenter Jill Biden announced the winner was, in fact, Raitt. Her face, live on TV, registered utter and genuine disbelief. “She didn’t even read my name,” Raitt recalls. “She read the name of the song. I just went into hyper-shock.”
What the world didn’t see, or hear, was that on the way up to the stage, Raitt cupped her hands over her mouth and said, to herself, “Can you fucking believe this?” As she admits now, “I didn’t want to be filmed on camera [saying that], but I had to say it to somebody, so I said it into my hand.”
Theories about the upset victory include the possibility that Swift, Adele, and Beyoncé all split the vote. Raitt herself doesn’t disagree; in her mind, it’s akin to Nick of Time nabbing Album of the Year in 1989 when, she says, “Henley, Tom Petty and the Traveling Wilburys canceled each other out.”
On the way to the podium, Raitt says she looked at the nearby tables and saw the other nominees clapping for her. Afterwards, Swift approached her. “I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was something like, ‘I didn’t mind losing to you,’” Raitt says. “That was great.” (What wasn’t so wonderful was a Daily Mail headline that called Raitt an “Unknown Blues Singer.” “They corrected it within 24 hours,” she says. “But it was pretty funny to have this many Grammys and hit records and still be ‘unknown.’”)
In the time since, the Raittaissance has continued. More covers of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin) have tumbled out. The most prominent right now is by way of Maggie Rogers, who occasionally slips it into one of her arena shows and calls it “one of my favorite Bonnie Raitt songs.” Jack Antonoff and Jack Harlow have both told Raitt they’ve heard compliments about the drum sounds on her older records and that she shouldn’t be surprised if more acts approach her for a sample.
And in December, Raitt will join the Grateful Dead, Francis Ford Coppola, and jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval as recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, one of the country’s most prestigious arts awards. Raitt has attended the Kennedy Center ceremony before, helping honor Buddy Guy and Mavis Staples, and she and her father, Broadway singer John Raitt, attended the very first ceremony, in 1978, when the likes of Fred Astaire and Richard Rodgers were honored; Raitt still remembers being in awe of seeing Astaire in person.
Raitt says she wasn’t told why she qualified for the award. (“Can you believe it?” Bob Weir wrote to her the same day, with similar disbelief), but her induction, scheduled for Dec. 8 in Washington, D.C., is the latest sign that the music she and the Dead championed is now part of American music history.
“Back then, if someone had said that they’d be giving Kennedy Center Honors to me and the Dead — are you kidding?” she laughs. “It’s not that we’re the establishment. It’s just that the culture can hold us all in. You can be somebody as different and uncommercial as the Grateful Dead or me. It’s not like I’m stomping down the mainstream Billboard chart. But I guess I’ve reached some sort of legacy status.” A source offered to tell Raitt who would be performing her songs that night, but she says she declined, wanting it to be a surprise.
As for her Charli XCX moment, Raitt has yet to meet the woman who is putting her music in front of an entirely different group of listeners. But she’s planning on sending a thank-you note shortly. “She’s pretty smart and passionate about her music,” Raitt says, “and she has certain humility I found charming. I really admire her, as I do Billie Eilish and Olivia [Rodrigo] and Taylor. They’re handling their fame in such an incredible way for such young women. They’re very self-aware. A lot of times people run off the rails with drugs, or lose their money, or sign up with a Svengali manager who steers them wrong or takes too much of their income. But this crop of young women, and Beyoncé too, have a lot of class and a lot of independence, and they’ve learned from the mistakes of those people that went on before.”
All around her, Raitt is seeing a raft of farewell tours by members of her generation. But stopping doesn’t appear to be in her cards; she’s about to start the southern leg of her latest tour and has festivals lined up for 2025. “I don’t think Aerosmith stopped because they wanted — they had lead-singer problems, like with Huey Lewis,” she says. “So heartbreaking. But my dad toured until he was 85 and now I’m up there with BB and Willie and Mick and Keith and Tony Bennett. I’m going to keep going, even if I have to come out in a walker or electric motorbike. The only reason my dad stopped,” she says with a light chuckle, “is because most of his audience passed away.”
So maybe the younger artists who admire her will bring in fans who will, shall we say, live a little longer? “Well, luckily, there are people like Charli and Justin who are making me relevant,” Raitt says. “When I started, I was idolizing my heroes like Sippie Wallace, Muddy Waters, and Judy Collins, and now I get to be revered like they were. I’ll take it, and wear it with pride.”
