We caught up with Carly Pearce ahead of the release of her new project – 29 – to talk about the evolution of the project, including working with collaborators Shane MacAnally and Josh Osborne. You can read our interview with Carly Pearce about her previous project here.
Hi Carly, how are you doing?
Good, how are you?
Very well. Congratulations on this tremendous project – it really is a phenomenal achievement – your last record took things up a notch, but this is yet another. How did the project come together, because it hasn’t even been that long since your last record?
Yeah, well my producer Busbee passed away from brain cancer and ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ was the last song that we worked on together. I felt like it was such a sweet moment to be able to go out and close that chapter on that song. Quite honestly, my whole second record was about falling in love and I just wasn’t there anymore, so I made the decision with my team to kind of explore other options and my manager set me up with Shane MacAnally and Josh Osborne, who I had written with before, but we immediately connected on a 90s country level, which – if you know anything about me – is my love language. It just felt like it was totally meant to be and suddenly we were writing these songs that felt like exactly where I wanted to go, both sonically and musically. It just felt meant to be.
It must have been a hard transition, going from losing someone who is so close to you, but you’re also losing one of your biggest collaborative partners. Were you nervous to go in and find another producer, because you can’t replace Busbee, but you had to move forward?
Yes, I was very apprehensive at first because Busbee found me when I was 23 years old and we had worked together for 7 years and he had gone through so much with me. It just didn’t feel right to be without him, but he was in the process of helping me find this collaborative situation.
The title track, ’29,’ stood out to me so much, because I have never heard such a raw and authentic track, saying how hard life can be and the expectations that you set out for life. How hard was it to be that vulnerable and authentic to your audience, because much as you want to bare your soul, you also want to keep something back for you and draw a boundary?
I think if you are close to me, you know that I’ve very much drawn a boundary as far as how much I’ll go into details of my relationship. However, what I have always done is be real, I don’t know how to not. Once I made a decision to go there, I knew that I couldn’t turn back, it’s almost like all the things that I would love to be able to say, but why not just put it into music and give it to you in the most authentic way that I know how to. I’m actually not a great communicator. It’s so interesting, I take a lot of time to really get what I want to say out, so songwriting has always been the easiest way for me to go there. So, for me, I can just hand this project over. Especially ’29,’ if you want to know how I felt, then here you go.
‘Show You Around’ was another moment on the record, it was filled with grief but also a hopeful note. What was the immediate inspiration behind that song?
I was at Busbee’s funeral and a speech was being given – Busbee has three daughters under the age of ten and a wife that’s beautiful – he was talking about how he felt that Busbee was in heaven looking at it, much as he would Disneyland, to find all of the special parts to show to his girls and all of us when we got there. I wrote ‘Show Me Around’ on my phone, just thinking that’s such a beautiful way for us to handle losing someone and to handle grief, to know that we will see them again and they will meet us in heaven and see us again. They’ll show us what they want to show us and the things we haven’t seen yet. I was so nervous to write a song about him because I really didn’t know how to do him justice in a song.
Well how can you sum up a whole human being in three minutes?
Yeah, I was super nervous about it, so I thought I’m going to give myself the space to do it. One day over Zoom, I looked at two co-writers – Emily Shackleton and Ben West – who are both very close to Busbee and I said ‘hey guys, I hate to do this to everyone, but I need to write this song, and we don’t have to do it today, but I know I have to write it with the two of you.’ I said it out loud – the idea and why I had the idea – and you could tell we were all like ‘oh lord,’ and it just wrote itself, it was written so fast.
I think you said in the trailer for ’29,’ how all of the songs did just fall out. Has songwriting really helped you get through everything?
Songwriting is therapy for me, it allowed me to process things, it allowed me to understand what I was going through and how I was feeling and kind of pull myself back and understand what it was and not what I made it to be. Yeah, I listen to this project in its entirety and just see everything that happened.
It’s your story in your own words rather than what everyone else says it is. The last track I wanted to ask about is one that’s not on this project – ‘Didn’t Do’ – are we going to hear that in some form do you think?
I’m telling you what, I need to go to my record label and just explain how many people have asked me about one damn YouTube video, because that to me feels like it’s meant to be a big song. I can not explain to you how many people, fans, media. I wrote that song at the end of the year, and knew it was special but I don’t think I quite knew it was that special. I think you will definitely see it, I hope that you get to see it as a single.
My fingers are crossed. Well congratulations for the release – it really is such a special project – so thanks for your time and we hope to see you in the UK sometime soon.
Yes, please! Thank you so much.
