Almost 10 years after moving to Nashville, Carly Pearce has finally arrived.
In the past year, the Kentucky native has topped the charts with “Every Little Thing,” dropped her debut album, toured with Blake Shelton and Thomas Rhett, won a CMT Music Award and made her 50th appearance on the Grand Ole Opry.
As her current single, “Hide the Wine,” continues to climb the charts (No. 26 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart), Carly is on the road with Rascal Flatts as support on their Back to Us Tour and gearing up to join Luke Bryan on his What Makes You Country Tour in September.
As Carly told Kix Brooks of American Country Countdown, she’s just trying to be “that modern country girl” like her heroes of the 1990s and 2000s, including Trisha Yearwood, Shania Twain, Reba McEntire and more.
“I grew up idolizing the [women of the] late ’90s and early 2000s,” says Carly to Kix. “I loved Faith Hill. I loved Trisha Yearwood. I loved the Dixie Chicks, Sara Evans, Reba, Dolly, Patty Loveless—all these women that had such texture and tone to their voices and all had an identity and all were singing and loving country music. Shania pushed the boundaries and did things visually and also in her music that maybe was a little bit of an eyebrow raise, and just Trisha’s timeless sound, and I think that all of those girls really made me fall in love with the genre and made me know that that’s what I wanted to do. I think that there’s no denying when you listen to my album or you come to my show or see my merch that I’m trying to recreate that modern country girl.”
