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Carly Pearce delivered an in-depth conversation about her recent decision to kick out an unruly audience member from her show, how she uses her heartache to create widely-relatable music, how she began her healing journey after divorce, her award-winning duet with Chris Stapleton, and more.
Pearce, 34, appeared on a newly-debuted bonus episode of The Viall Files on Wednesday (August 14). The Grammy-winning artist said “the Kentucky side of me came out,” when she recently made headlines for confronting a heckler during her performance at a festival in Minnesota. Earlier this month, videos circulated on social media of Pearce saying: “Somebody get him out of here. I do not want him at my show. Get out of my show. If you’re gonna be an a**hole, then you’re gonna have to say it to me and get the f*** out of my show.”
(Warning: language)
“I wouldn’t call him a gentleman,” Pearce said when asked about the “gentleman” on host Nick Viall’s podcast. “I was like, ‘let me tell you a little bit about myself.’ And he was far away from me, and he was like, ‘no one cares.’ And it was like this split second where I was like, ‘OK, yep, I’m gonna do it.’ I just went down and I was like, ‘who said that?’ And everybody’s (pointing at him), and he raised his hand and smiled at me. and when he said that to me, I think it was for every single person that just sits behind their computer or thinks somebody’s not gonna call you out, or you talk sh*t about. I just saw red. I became my mother. The Kentucky side of me came out, and I was like, ‘this is for anybody who feels like they can’t stand up.’ And sure, could I have used a different word choice? Yeah. I could’ve.
“People are like, ‘I’ve never seen you like that.’ I’m like, well, especially as a female — I know for me, like male artists all the time are cussing people out at their shows and nobody knows about it. But because I did it, it was like, [gasp],” Pearce continued. “And it’s just like, women should stand up for themselves, too, and not be afraid. And that guy — I don’t think he thought that I would ever hear him, which is a problem for me. He just had this entitlement, and I was like, ‘I’m a human being, too.’ I just hope that somebody in that audience that maybe they thought they couldn’t stand up for themselves, or who’s seen the stupid video knows you can fight back. It’s OK.”
(Warning: language)
Pearce went on during the podcast interview to talk about getting married and divorced when she was 29 years old. The emotional journey led to some of Pearce’s most widely-known work. She used her heartbreak to fuel her songwriting, and in 2021, she released 29: Written in Stone. The album included “Next Girl,” “Never Wanted To Be That Girl,” with Ashley McBryde, “What He Didn’t Do” and more. Pearce took a few years to herself before releasing her fourth studio album, hummingbird, in June. She said, in part, in the hours before hummingbird’s debut that she hopes “you see that no matter where you’re at, you’re right on time Don’t let anybody tell you that just because you’re not living the ‘American dream’ or ‘society’s standards’ that anything’s wrong with you. It’s OK to not have it all figured out. You can still be happy through that, and I feel like what I have learned more than anything is that God gave me a really big story. A story that, if I’m honest, I don’t know that I really wanted. But I have owned it in the last three years, and I’m proud of it, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come, and I just can’t wait for you guys to hear hummingbird.”
Pearce is getting ready for her first-ever world tour, kicking off in October and running through May 2025.