Carly Pearce knew she could face backlash when she first teased her song “Church Girl” on social media earlier this year.
“I knew that putting sex and getting high and drinking and Jesus all in the same sentence, that people were going to come out to play,” Pearce tells Billboard of the song, in which Pearce sings of finding a more accepting approach to faith, despite the judgment and prejudices sometimes found in religious circles.
“I grew up with church trauma, if you will,” Pearce says of being raised in a Southern Baptist community, “where the right thing to do was save yourself for marriage, don’t get divorced… I remember when I heard this song, it was healing a part of my heart. I wore the true love waits ring, the purity ring, and then I went through a divorce [from fellow country artist Michael Ray in 2020]. I went through such a difficult season of guilt and shame. I wanted to record this for anybody who’s staying in something because they feel like they have to.
“And I have watched some friends struggle with their sexuality, struggle with fear,” she continues. “I feel the whole point of God’s mission to all of us is to love thy neighbor, and we have gotten so far away from that. This [song] was a moment for me to be bold and say something that I hope can help save people.”
That willingness to be unfiltered and unapologetic in her perspectives is the heartbeat of Pearce’s fifth studio album Honest Woman, out today on BBR Music Group/BMG. The 16-song album, which includes “Church Girl,” continues her penchant for navigating complex emotional terrain to arrive at bone-cutting truths, much like previous albums Hummingbird and 29: Written in Stone.
The Kentucky girl who grew up loving the music of Alison Krauss & Union Station highlights her bluegrass roots, singing with former Union Station member Dan Tyminski on “Who’s Lying Here,” and teaming with both Tyminski and guitar virtuoso Molly Tuttle on “What If You Loved Me.”
“I knew I wanted a bluegrass moment, because it felt so raw and honest,” Pearce says. “[Dan’s] been such a big influence and he ended up doing so much on the album, and it’s special to have a duet because we wrote it together. To me, it reminds me of the feeling I got when I heard him and Alison Krauss sing, and these bluegrass parts of the album are some of the most precious songs. And Molly, I was hosting the CMA Country Christmas special a few years ago, and her and her band were a part of the special. I remember just being blown away by how effortlessly she plays.”
One of the album’s early singles was a sultry duet with Riley Green on “If I Don’t Leave, I’m Gonna Stay” — but deeper into the album, it also traverses themes from restless ambition (“She Don’t”) and self-confident romantic dismissals (“He Don’t Like My Dogs”) to the push-and-pull of desiring a life that is fulfilling both professionally and personally (“Dream Come True”).
“Happy for Myself,” which examines jealousy and playing the comparisons game, was inspired by a moment when Pearce’s assistant asked the singer-songwriter to accompany her to look at engagement rings.
“Of course, I was excited for her — but also had this feeling of envy at the jewelry store, and I felt so guilty when that happened, but I just wondered, ‘When do I get my moment?’” Pearce recalls. “In this day of social media when you can open your phone on any given day and see what someone else is doing, I think we all deal with comparison. It’s been interesting to see how people relate to it — whether that is people dealing with infertility, or I even saw someone post about waiting for her moment when she gets to ring the ‘cancer free’ bell — and it’s just such an important song to me.”
Pearce says the spark of longing that inspired “Happy for Myself” has since blossomed into a season of happiness.
“I get a little emotional every time I talk about it, but I wrote it five months before I met my boyfriend,” she says. “Now when I listen to the bridge of that song, I hope that my little love story can give hope to other people of what could be on the other side of ‘Happy for Myself.’”
Elsewhere on the album, “Dream Come True,” as Pearce offers a stark look at the relational sacrifices often required in the name of chasing a music career. “No matter what you do in life, if you chase something, you will sacrifice something else,” the Grammy and three-time CMA Award winner reflects. “I kind of got to this point over the last few years where, on paper, I’ve accomplished everything that I wanted to as a child, and that’s a really amazing thing — but I think at the top, it did not fulfill me in the way that I thought it would.”
Pearce, 36, recalled moving into a home that she had purchased for herself: “I was surrounded by women my age who had husbands and children and a very simple, ordinary life that looked very different than mine. For the first time I wondered what would that have been like and did I miss something? If artists would be honest and pull the highlight reel down, I think more people have felt this way than not.”
One of her fellow artists who is indeed pulling down the highlight reel is Pearce’s longtime friend and musical colleague Kelsea Ballerini, who released the similarly-themed song “I Sit In Parks” around the same time that Pearce released “Dream Come True.”
“She is my sister in this business,” Pearce says of Ballerini. “She is so special to me, and we truly know what the other one is going through. We both found it so ironic — we actually ended up playing each other those two songs before they came out. It was in that same moment we were writing about, and we were talking about it. Our friendship has carried us through some really hard seasons, because it’s so special to have a true sister that knows what you’re going through. I say in the song, ‘A million girls would love to wear your shoes/ You can’t complain if it’s the kind of life you choose.’ I never wanted it to feel like I wasn’t grateful. But it’s hard.”
When Pearce released her debut album Every Little Thing in 2017, the country music genre was two years deep into “Tomatogate,” a movement and reckoning that centered around the gross underrepresentation of women artists on country radio. As Honest Woman is released nearly a decade after her debut, country music is seeing a wave of women country artists dominating the charts, including Ella Langley, Megan Moroney and Stella Lefty.
“It feels like the ‘90s to me again, where the girls are the ones absolutely crushing,” Pearce says, referencing a decade of country music when female artists including Reba McEntire, Patty Loveless, Martina McBride, Faith Hill, Shania Twain and Trisha Yearwood were mainstays on the country radio dial. “I’m telling you what — look at these girls right now. Look at Lainey [Wilson] and Megan and Ella and Stella, they are true artists and they are working their butts off. I’m really proud of what’s going on. I really am such a fan of all of these girls. I’m just like, ‘Go, girls, go!’”
As for her own future musical goals, Pearce has hopes for a more bluegrass-soaked project in the future. “I have a dream of doing a bluegrass collaboration record, and having all the people I love so much doing traditional bluegrass songs, so maybe this is my little start to it,” she says, naming Alison Krauss and Union Station, Tyminski, Ricky Skaggs, Tuttle, Billy Strings, Doyle Lawson, Rhonda Vincent, Dailey & Vincent and Larry Cordle among her dream album lineup collaborators.
Regardless of the genre of music she’s recording, Pearce says she’s chasing enduring emotional impact, not simply accolades or viral moments.
“I’ve had this awakening that people don’t stop me and say, ‘Oh, I loved your dress or your viral TikTok video.’ They say, ‘Your music made me feel not alone,’ or ‘I played your song at my Dad’s funeral.’ I’ve put my flag down of going, ‘That’s my mission, to make music that is impactful, that has a great purpose for people’s lives.’”