How 'Every Little Thing' Singer Carly Pearce Defied Odds With Risky Song
Sparsely produced ballad flies in the face of convention, but is resonating with both fans and country radio
Carly Pearce's ballad "Every Little Thing" has become a surprise hit
She'd been a wunderkind, fronting her first band by age 11 in her native
Taylor Mill, Kentucky, and performing six shows a week at Dollywood in
Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, at 16. After signing an artist development deal
with Sony, her team's efforts to make her into the next bluegrass star
failed before an album was ever cut. Interest waned, the market moved on
and Pearce lost her record deal. She had to take whatever work she
could get for the next few years: from mall jobs at Banana Republic to
cleaning Airbnb properties.
Sometime later Pearce was scrubbing the kitchen sink at one of those
rental properties, with the Pandora country station on in the
background. Suddenly, she recognized the song playing: "Dance Hall" by The Voice
fourth-season winner Danielle Bradbery. During Pearce's time with Sony,
that was her song – the one she'd put on hold to launch her career.
Now, she was listening to it help launch someone else's. This was when
she finally cried.
"The cards were in [Bradbery's] favor at the time, and I was cleaning toilets," Pearce, 27, tells Rolling Stone Country
during a rare moment at home in Nashville. "I've had moments of wanting
to give up and quit and go home back to Kentucky, but I think there's
still just this constant fire in me that I really do and did believe,
through all of it, that I'm meant to do it."
Five years later,
Pearce is definitely doing it. Her first single, "Every Little Thing,"
is currently heading toward the Top 10 on the Billboard Country
Airplay chart and will anchor her October 13th debut album of the same
name. But as talented as she may be – talk to anyone who knows her, and
they'll all tell you about her great talent –Pearce has come this far
because of her tenacity.
"Too many amazingly talented people give
up, go home, get burned-out," says Emily Shackelton, who, along with
producer Busbee, co-wrote the single "Every Little Thing" with Pearce.
"Nashville really is about the ones that stick it out through those hard
times. And that's just Carly's story to a T."
Pearce agrees with this assessment.
"I am a poster child for how you can get every single door slammed on
you five times in a row from every single person in town, and you can
be told that you're old news and you're past your time," she says.
Through
the low times after losing her deal, Pearce was still writing, playing
rounds and shopping her songs to artists and a record to labels. It was
during this time that she met Pete Fisher, then the vice president and
general manager of the Grand Ole Opry (he's now the CEO of the Academy
of Country Music). Fisher, a former music publisher and artist manager,
was impressed by Pearce's voice, but particularly by her drive. Over
about a dozen meetings they had before her Opry debut in 2015, Fisher
noted she was quick to take advice and follow through.
"She
wasn't one to grab a cup of coffee and then nothing happened afterward,"
he says. "She very much approached her pursuit of a country-music
career in a real professional manner."
Fisher started floating her
name around, and in 2015 Busbee signed Pearce as his first artist to
develop. She had the voice, but it was that drive that made the producer
confident that she was worth the investment.
"I'd rather bet on someone I know will work that hard," he says. "To
be able to find somebody whose only missing piece was the music, that's a
no-brainer."
Despite his success, Busbee might be the least
likely producer to partner with someone like Pearce. His background
isn't solely within country, and at the point when the two met, he'd
worked with such varied artists as the Backstreet Boys, Toni Braxton and
the Fray. Pearce, with her traditionalist upbringing and a voice
seemingly at home in Appalachia – "She could be on stage singing
bluegrass with anybody," he says – was on the opposite side of the
spectrum.
"Part of what we do is taking risks, and you're taking
risks based on statistics. Statistics say do not bet on a female
artist," says Busbee. "But I love soulful artists. Carly is soulful.
Maren Morris is soulful. Lady A is soulful. Keith Urban is soulful."
Possibly the best example of Pearce's soul comes from the title track of Every Little Thing. The
sparsely produced ballad seemingly flies in the face of convention – a
woman in country music debuting a ballad about heartbreak checks nearly
every box of what not to do. And yet it's working, despite the long
odds.
"The thing that an artist needs, especially the first time,
is that car-crash moment, that thing that's so impactful that people
can't help but stop and listen to it," says Busbee. "It's not whether
it's a ballad or it's not a ballad: It's about the fact that when you
hear it, you kind of go, 'What is that?' and you can't stop listening."
That
song's initial success, released independently and bolstered by support
from SiriusXM's the Highway station in late 2016, has led to a
whirlwind year: Pearce signed with Big Machine Label Group and the song
has steadily ground its way up the Billboard Country Airplay
chart, while Pearce herself has landed opening slots for Bobby Bones'
comedy show and Brett Young's first headlining tour this fall. While she
may not have had the smoothest journey to where she is now, Pearce's
indomitable drive has allowed her to rewrite her own ending for a new
and better one.
"I think that now I can look back and see all of
the challenges and the struggles and the setbacks and the different ways
of God showing me that this was going to be the path for me, but I
needed to get a lot of grit," she says. "I feel so lucky that I didn't
get it prematurely because I do think it wouldn't have been going the
same way and I wouldn't be so proud of the music that I'm making.
"I hope that I can start to be a light to other female artists," she
continues, "and other artists in general, that you can do anything if
you just work really hard."
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