For her sophomore album, Carly Pearce chose to give it her own name – a testament to how good she feels in her skin and in her sound.
“So much has happened to me in the past couple of years, and I feel more assertive and sure of myself than ever before,” she told Access Hollywood. “I’m turning 30 this year, and it’s a new decade, and I just felt like I really have grown into who I am.”
Carly has had a lot of big career moments over the past few years – from hitting No. 1 with her debut single “Every Little Thing” and getting a New Artist of the Year nomination at the 2019 CMAs, to finding her soulmate in fellow country star Michael Ray.
“Falling in love and finding my person and getting married was the biggest [stepping stone], and that’s just given me such a sense of confidence in more ways than I ever thought it would,” she said.
That helped give Carly the courage to get even more real on “Carly Pearce” than she did in her already personal debut album, “Every Little Thing.” The new record includes autobiographical songs about her first feelings about Michael, her bittersweet breakup with an ex, and her memories of her grandfather.
“I went just another layer deeper than ‘Every Little Thing.’ I tried to go completely transparent, which, I know, it’s really hard to even think of that!” she laughed.
One of her most emotional songs on album No. 2 is “It Won’t Always Be Like This,” a ballad about “going through the rollercoaster of life.”
“[I’m writing that song to the past version of me] that at 16 moved away, and her grandpa told her to do it because he knew she could. The one that cleaned Airbnbs and was a backup singer, wishing, hoping, praying one day that she was going to get a song on the radio. And the one that cried in her bedroom thinking that these relationships that ended were the end of the world, when they actually were the start … That song is the one that I think I’m the most tied to,” she said.
Find out more about Carly and her new album in the video above.
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