Five-time Grammy-winner Mary Chapin Carpenter’s newest studio album, Personal History, deals with just this. The album features some of Carpenter’s most personal writing to date. In early 2025, the 11-song album Personal History was recorded at Real World Studios in Box, England, with Josh Kaufman (Bob Weir, The National, The Hold Steady) producing and a world-class band of musicians: Matt Rollings (piano, Hammond organ, Phillips organ, accordion, xylophone), Duke Levine (electric guitar, hammer dulcimer), Chris Vatalaro (drums, percussion), Cameron Ralston (bass), and Josh Kaufman himself (guitar, organ, harmonium, harmonica). Anais Mitchell lends harmonies to “Home Is A Song.” Carpenter shared of the album process, “I started writing the songs on this album as the pandemic began winding down; the titular song ‘What Did You Miss’ pointed the way forward, with its final verse: ‘I’ve been writing it down/song by song/as a personal history’ when imagining this collection of songs as memoir, and how the wisdom that comes with growing older becomes a north star, whether one is celebrating life’s joys or navigating life’s inevitable losses.” “From the first verse of ‘Paint + Turpentine’ about sitting in the dark of the Birchmere Music Hall watching Guy Clark teach a master class in songwriting and storytelling, to coming to terms with how later life turned out in ‘Girl and Her Dog,’ to inventorying what matters in ‘The Saving Things’ to discovering the wisdom in words and phrases that we usually roll our eyes towards in ‘Say It Anyway,’ it is my hope that these songs allow the listener to come away not only with a musical sketch of my life from young adulthood on, but also an affirming reflection of their own life as well.”
