The title of Brandy Clark's new album, Your Life Is a Record, is so simple and intuitive that the singer was initially convinced that it was already taken.

"I searched it, because I thought, 'That has to have been a title, you know?'" she admitted with a laugh during an industry-only album preview in Nashville, while in conversation with CMT Senior Vice President of Music Strategy Leslie Fram. "It's the first line of the record, and it's the first line of that song. So it just felt right."

In retrospect, the album's name seemed like an obvious choice, but Clark says she actually had to get some outside perspective from a friend to realize that it was the right name.

"I'd love to take credit for it, but that brilliant idea was not mine," the singer admits. "I was talking about the record with Jessie Jo Dillon, who's a co-writer and a friend of mine, and has several songs on the record ... and she said, 'Hey B, what if you called it Your Life Is a Record?' I was like, 'I love that.'"

Dillon was a critical collaborator for Clark on the record in many respects: One of the songs she co-wrote, "I'll Be the Sad Song," is a tune that, in some ways, sums up the project's themes of heartbreak and meditative sadness.

"I love a sad song. Clearly, when everybody hears this record, that's gonna be very obvious," Clark reflects. "I loved the idea [of "I'll Be the Sad Song"]. Probably to all but one person you encounter in your life, you are their sad song, and they're yours. I've definitely been somebody's sad song. I've had a few people that have been my sad song."

The songs on the album were written over a span of several years, but once Clark finished Your Life Is a Record and looked at the songs as a collective, it was pretty clear that it documented a breakup from start to finish.

"Myself, the label and then [producer] Jay [Joyce] -- Jay said to me, 'You know, this is a breakup record,'" the singer recalls. "And I said, 'Wow, it is.' And I had gone through a breakup of a very long relationship and didn't realize that that was just kind of in the air. It definitely is, as you will hear, a breakup record."

Clark's new project is due out on Friday (March 6).

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