Julien Baker Performs ‘Faith Healer’ On ‘Colbert’

Julien Baker served as the musical guest on Thursday’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Baker and her band offered a remote performance of “Faith Healer.”

“Faith Healer” is the lead single from Little Oblivions, Baker’s forthcoming studio album. The follow-up to 2017’s Turn Out The Lights arrives via Matador Records on February 26.

Julien shared a statement regarding “Faith Healer” upon its release:

Put most simply, I think that ‘Faith Healer’ is a song about vices, both the obvious and the more insidious ways that they show up in the human experience. I started writing this song 2 years ago and it began as a very literal examination of addiction. For awhile, I only had the first verse, which is just a really candid confrontation of the cognitive dissonance a person who struggles with substance abuse can feel– the overwhelming evidence that this substance is harming you, and the counterintuitive but very real craving for the relief it provides. When I revisited the song I started thinking about the parallels between the escapism of substance abuse and the other various means of escapism that had occupied a similar, if less easily identifiable, space in my psyche.

There are so many channels and behaviors that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal definition of addiction. I (and so many other people) are willing to believe whomever– a political pundit, a preacher, a drug dealer, an energy healer– when they promise healing, and how that willingness, however genuine, might actually impede healing.

Baker assembled her full band at Nashville’s Exit/In to film the version of “Faith Healer” featured on last night’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Check out the results below: