Inside Carly Pearce’s Most Honest Era Yet [Interview]
Carly Pearce. Photo: Luke Rogers
Carly Pearce is stepping into the most honest era of her career.
After years of navigating the pressures of the country music industry, Pearce found herself at a crossroads. The Grammy, CMA and ACM award-winning artist recognized that the spark that first pulled her to Nashville had begun to fade. That realization became the starting point for what she now describes as her most personal creative chapter yet.
“When I wrote ‘Dream Come True,’ I realized I needed to fall back in love with music,” Pearce says. “I let the town and the charts and the followers and comparison kill me. I had to return to the reason that I fell in love with the dream.”
Photo: Luke Rogers
That mindset now shapes her forthcoming chapter, a time that reflects not only artistic growth, but a deeper commitment to honesty, vulnerability and storytelling.
Pearce offered the first glimpse of her next album in November with “Dream Come True,” a deeply autobiographical track she describes as a “gut check” on the real cost of success. Written alongside Lauren Hungate, Tofer Brown and Emily Weisband and produced with Ben West, the song strips away the fantasy of “making it” to reveal the quieter emotional toll that often comes with achievement.
“Every line is my story,” she says. “I moved into a cul-de-sac with a bunch of families around my age. I moved in by myself. I had this realization of some things that made me feel really lonely. [I had] a house full of things that reminded me of my success, but no one to share it with.”
The song isn’t rooted in regret, but in honesty. Pearce frames it as a reflection of the complicated emotions that come with finally living out a lifelong dream. “I moved here 17 years ago to do exactly what I’m doing. I never want people to think that I’m not grateful for that. But in gratitude, there is grief, and something that many people probably deal with is if you’re successful, you’ve probably missed out on something in your life.”
For Pearce, that emotional tradeoff shows up in very real, personal ways. “It’s missing events, it’s family and friends having to come to me on a tour bus, the majority of the time. It’s my life being exploited on social media or Reddit or some sort of headline. It’s my mom and her health journey, and feeling like I couldn’t be there to take care of her when she really helped me with this crazy dream,” she says.
This feeling is something Pearce says she’s come to recognize not just in herself, but in others. “My girlfriends who are the stay-at-home moms in the cul-de-sac, they had other dreams, too. They’re living out one dream, but they look at me and ask ‘What is that like?’ It’s a push and pull of the grass isn’t always greener.”
The emotional weight of the track was shaped inside a writing room built on trust. Hungate brought the initial idea to the session, and Pearce says the concept immediately connected with what she was experiencing at the time. “I just cried that day because I was feeling so beat up by the industry. I was feeling very much like ‘what does it all mean’ and ‘what is it all for?’”
That vulnerability was made possible by the close circle of collaborators Pearce has leaned on throughout this new chapter. Hungate, Brown and Weisband, along with frequent collaborator Jordan Reynolds, form what she calls “the heartbeat of the new record.”
Pearce’s most recent release, “Church Girl,” takes on faith, identity and acceptance, another deeply personal subject for Pearce. Written by Carter Faith, Cameron Bedell and Seth Ennis, the track marks a rare outside cut for Pearce.
“I was in my kitchen and it took my breath away when it got to the end of the chorus. It’s a bold song. I don’t think it’s by chance it’s finding me now, and I don’t think it’s by chance that it’s mine,” she shares.
The song’s message immediately resonated, particularly given Pearce’s upbringing and evolving relationship with faith. “Being somebody who grew up in the church, whose faith is such a big part of my life, and being somebody who’s also lived a lot of life, I feel like this message is so important to people because religion is so hard,” she explains. “It’s something I feel like a lot of people stay away from because of the judgment or because they feel the views are so rigid.”
Pearce has been open about her faith throughout her career. As she’s grown older and lived more life outside the structure of her childhood beliefs, she says her perspective has shifted towards one of empathy and grace. “I think my faith has evolved into a place of a lot of grace for humanity,” she says. “I’ve had to make some choices that, if you had told me as a child I was gonna have to make, I would have been like, ‘well, I’m going to hell.’ And, it’s just not the case.”
Pearce acknowledges that releasing such a bold track comes with risk. “There’s a lot of angry people. There’s a lot of judgy people,” she says. Still, she is firm about the song’s intention. “For me, it is not me saying, ‘go get high and have sex, and be crazy’ at all. But, it’s me saying if your path to Jesus looks a little different, I think Jesus still loves you, and I think he would want more people to accept you for those parts of your story and the journey that you’re on.”
Pearce will take this new chapter on the road with her upcoming “Inside the Dream Tour,” which includes six dates in the United Kingdom and Ireland. She is also slated to return to Australia for the first time since 2019 in March.
As she looks ahead to the full album release, Pearce says this era represents a creative homecoming. “This really is my best music I’ve ever made.”
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