We catch up with Carly Pearce to talk about ‘Next Girl,‘ her CMA nominations and her number one song ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now.’
 Hi, how are you doing? Congratulations on the last few weeks – your CMA nominations, the new single…
It’s pretty crazy, I’m very excited for sure.
‘New Artist of the Year’ is a big honour, but I think ‘Song of the Year’ is always such a special one for the songwriter. 2020 has been a year, but that must save it somehow.
New Artist of the Year is obviously an honour, but ‘Song of the Year’ to be recognised as a songwriter and not just as an artist that was crazy. But yes, 2020 has been very interesting on so many levels for all of us, but I feel so lucky that I had the biggest song of my career during this time, I launched my single in the US yesterday and had number one most added – had 57 stations – which you just don’t get anymore, and yes CMA nominations, I’m just like ‘ok, 2020, maybe on the back half you’re going to be good to me.’
You’ve talked about that write with Luke Combs and how you were surprised that it actually happened, did you have a special feeling in the room that day when you wrote that song?
Something that I remember from that write was that he was playing the hook, we had talked about our love for 90s country, he just started playing the chords and said ‘sing to me what you hear’ and just for the first time, I just didn’t care, I wasn’t writing for radio, I wasn’t writing for anything and that first verse just came out of my mouth in its entirety with the melody. I just remember thinking ‘ugh, this is the kind of country music I want to sing.’ It’s so funny because I feel like that song has really spearheaded this new idea of ‘let me just get rid of this album that I just put out and create something new.’
You say that you and Luke bonded over that 90s country sound and it is so embedded in that song and in the new song, people seem to just be responding really well to that. Everyone talks about 90s country as being this magical era and it does feel like this return to that.Â
Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of male artists that are coming back with that sound, you have Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs, but I feel like we’re missing the girl to do it, I just wanted to make sure that there’s no question that that’s the sort of music I want to make. You’re right, the 90s was just a magical era of country music.
Talking about ‘Next Girl,’ can you take us back to the writing room that day, you wrote it with two long-time collaborators of yours – Shane MacAnally and Josh Osborne – and I feel like something magical always happens with those two…
Yeah, I wrote ‘If My Name Was Whiskey’ with Shane on my first record, which was one of my favourite songs. We got on Zoom and I just had the idea of ‘Next Girl’ and that whole Zoom write just changed the course of everything for me, because I felt like immediately they wanted to produce me and they understood me. Yesterday was the year anniversary of losing my producer Busbee, so this whole pandemic has been really hard on me on all levels because from a musical standpoint I didn’t know what music looked like without him. When we wrote ‘Next Girl’ for me it was Patty Loveless ‘Blame It On Your Heart’ in 2020 and that made me so happy, I immediately knew it was the single and I immediately knew that they understood me and this was the production-side of things that I needed to walk down.
I mean I love the track and the message that it puts out for young girls everywhere too who are looking up to you and your music. Was that something you had in the back of your mind as you were releasing it?
I’ve always felt a responsibility I guess to be a role model, but I think I write all my songs – ‘Every Little Thing,’ ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ – with the intent of being completely authentic to myself and hoping that somebody else has been through it, there’s not a lyric in that song that’s not straight out of my story. It’s cool to see that other girls are taking it, I’ve even had moms say that this will be the song they play to their daughters when they start dating. Then I have divorced women who are like ‘where was this song four years ago?’ It’s cool.
It’s weird how almost the more specific you can get with a song and make the lyrics more specific to your experience, the more relatable the song actually can be for people.
I know, I mean I’ve exploited my entire life probably more than a lot of people, but I think that’s why people relate to me and I’m just completely honest.
Do you think that this single then will fall into more music and inspiring a next project and your sound to follow?
I do. People keep asking me ‘are you working on an album? What are you doing?’ I don’t really know, I don’t know how you release music in 2020 but I will tell you that we already have quite a few tracks recorded and quite a few things written and ready to go in the pipeline. It’s definitely more country, ‘Next Girl’ is definitely showing you the direction of things to follow. I’m excited, I know I say this every time but ‘Next Girl’ and the music to follow is the most honest music I could ever make for you.
Thank you so much for your time Carly, always really appreciate it.
Thank you, good to see you.
