Carly Pearce is reflecting on a powerful lesson that she turned into a song on her hit album, 29: Written In Stone. That song, “What He Didn’t Do,” is set to become the third single from that collection, Pearce announced on her social media channels on Monday morning (May 23).
“Life goes on. You KNOW that when you’re reeling…feeling like the fool and so hurt... but then there’s a moment when those emotions start to clear,” Pearce wrote in her caption on Instagram, after a few days of teasing the single. “That’s when you look in the mirror and you ask yourself what happened and try to learn from your mistakes. That’s where ‘What He Didn’t Do’ came from. To me, it’s really a song of hope and trying to get smarter before moving forward.”
It’s also a song that, like many others that Pearce has written, has strongly resonated with audiences. Pearce shared a moment from one of her shows on TikTok in March, for example, where the crowd “sang so loud I couldn’t even hear myself.”
“What He Didn’t Do” reflects on a painful split, and Pearce opts not to tell the listener what the man in the heartache song did, but divulges what he didn’t do: “Treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word/ Stay home 'cause he wanted to/ always fight for my love, hold on tight like it's something/ That he couldn't stand to lose/ The devil's in the details, I won't tell the hell that he put me through/ All I know is in the end, it wasn't what he did, no/ It was what he didn't do”
Pearce explained on TikTok last year that she “wrote [‘What He Didn’t Do’] to remind all of us to remember what WE need in a relationship. It’s easy to get lost in a relationship that actually isn’t meeting your needs.” She added that the song reminds her to hold her standards (and her head) high, and to “NEVER settle for anything less than the love I deserve.”
Listen to the full song here: