“Justin said, ‘I’m working with this artist you may or may not know’”: Bonnie Raitt confirms that Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon contacted her personally when he and Charli XCX wanted to sample Nick Of Time on their Brat remix track

Bon Iver’s appearance on Charli XCX’s Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat may have been a bit of a surprise, but the presence of a few Bonnie Raitt samples on the new version of I Think About It All The Time was even more eyebrow-raising.

There they are, though: vocal lines (and possibly other bits) from Raitt’s 1989 hit Nick Of Time are scattered throughout the song, and it turns out that it was Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon himself who helped to make it happen.

“Justin said, ‘I’m working with this artist you may or may not know,’” Raitt tells Rolling Stone, recalling that Vernon contacted her via email. He wrote that Charli “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 had indeed heard of Charli XCX, and was fully onboard with the idea. And, when she got to hear the almost finished track, she was impressed.

“It’s hard to know exactly which parts they used,” says Raitt. “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 honoured.”

Charli xcx - I think about it all the time featuring bon iver (official audio) - YouTube

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Vernon’s love of Raitt’s music is well documented. He’s one of many artists to cover I Can’t Make You Love Me, her 1991 hit - others include George Michael, Adele and Prince - and his version also includes a snippet of Nick of Time.

He’s not the only contemporary artist who’s a fan either. When Raitt’s Just Like That surprisingly beat Taylor Swift to Song of the Year (and also Lizzo, Adele, Harry Styles and Beyonce, for that matter) in 2023, she recalls that Swift approached her to offer her congratulations.

“I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was something like, ‘I didn’t mind losing to you,’” Raitt says. “That was great.”

In fact, Raitt is full of praise for several of the younger generation of female artists who are currently dominating the cultural landscape. She calls Charli XCX “pretty smart and passionate about her music,” adding that “she has certain humility I found charming.

Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and, yes, Taylor Swift are also singled out for praise: “this crop of young women, and Beyoncé too, have a lot of class and a lot of independence,” says Raitt, “and they’ve learned from the mistakes of those people that went on before.”