“Broken Horses” is the fourth song on Brandi Carlile’s seventh studio album, In These Silent Days.

It shares the name and many themes of her 2021 memoir, in which she delves deeply into her Christian upbringing and her growth afterwards.

In the introduction to the book, she recalls the origins of its name: a moment where her daughter Evangeline asks how Carlile could afford horses despite growing up poor. Carlile answered, “I couldn’t. I was given broken ones.”