Carly Pearce Talks Making Her 'Healing' Fourth Album 'hummingbird': Hear Title Track Now

Carly Pearce thought she knew what the title track of her fourth full-length album would be. Then he wrote “hummingbird”.

“When I wrote 'Country Music Made Me Do It,' I was like, 'That's the title of the album,'” he says of the playful, cheeky song that came out last summer. “'Hummingbird' was one of the last songs I wrote for the record, and I was like, 'Oh my God, this was meant to be all along.'

The delicate title piece on resilience closes hummingbird, coming June 14. “It's a little bluegrass moment of mine,” he says, adding that he got a tattoo of a hummingbird once he finished the project. “It's lyrically a lot more abstract than what you'd normally hear on a modern country record. It's kind of an artistic way of saying you're not going to compromise.”

After the weight of the 2021 EP 29 and his full body partner 29: Written in stonesays Pearce of writing the songs for hummingbird it felt “light and airy and liberated and like a big exhalation.”

Both 29 and 29: Written in stone received commercial and critical acclaim, including Pearce's duet with Ashley McBryde, “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” which won a 2023 Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. The sets they fearlessly mined Pierce's pain after her divorce from Michael Ray and were filled with confessional reflections. The albums “really taught me how vulnerable I could be and how that could overcome that,” she says. “Although I thought I was only writing my story, it seems I was writing a lot of other people's stories.”

However, Pearce hit a bit of a snag when it came time to start the new album. “I was so afraid of how to follow 29 because I never wrote that I thought it would have any kind of success,” he says. “But what it did is it taught me so much about how strong I am. And so to see this album come to an end and speak to so much that's happened to me, I'm really proud of myself, and hummingbird it will forever remind me that I really can do anything.”

While love often still goes sideways in songs hummingbird, on many of them, including “Truck on Fire,” “Still Blue” and “Rock Paper Scissors,” Pearce comes from a point of control and often humor. “I think there's a lot of power and almost playfulness in laughing at what you've been through and not joking about it, but unblocking it because it's part of your story,” she says.

With the exception of the soulful Grammy-nominated duet and current single “We Don't Fight Anymore,” featuring Chris Stapleton, the first half of the 14-track album is lighter than the second half by design. “It was important to me that the first songs people heard from me were that I'm doing well,” he says “It's a two-part album about healing because with healing comes great freedom and joy. Even the heavier side that can feel more difficult at times, there is still a sense of strength 29 I didn't because, frankly, I didn't have the strength during it 29.”

Pearce, who co-wrote 13 of the 14 tracks, produced the album with 29 and Written in Stone producers Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. “They know me on such a personal level now that I think they were the only people I could make this next record with,” he says. “They just had such a sense of where I was and where I wanted to go and sonically what I wanted to do.”

That included “doubling down” on the traditional country instruments the Kentucky native featured in these two sets that were noticeably absent from her first two albums with the late pop producer Busbee at the helm. Songs like “Fault Line” are reminiscent of her musical hero Loretta Lynn and the music she listened to growing up.

“My grandparents, when they realized I wanted to be a country artist at age 5, they bought me all these fancy [compilations] from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and studied them. While '90s country is such a big part of me, those classic sounds of Loretta and Tammy [Wynette] and George [Jones]I was just a fan of all of them.”

The full, monochrome, stripped-down visualization for “hummingbird,” premiering above, sets the tone for the visuals for the project. “There's less make-up, less of real fixed hair. There are prisms in the camera lens,” says Pearce. “It was very intentional and very important to me to make the visual feel different than anything I've ever done.”

Pearce was inspired by one of her fellow artists. “Especially in country music, it can get very, very sophisticated and predictable in its portrayal. I've been really inspired by people like Kacey Musgraves, who has remained competitive but always has something different about the way she looks in her photos. And I wanted to find how I could challenge myself visually to look a little bit different.”

Pearce will debut the title track at Big Machine Label Group's Country Radio Seminar luncheon on Friday (March 1). “This is definitely not a song you'd think I'd choose to sing on a radio dinner, but I'm singing it because that's the kind of music I make. That's the kind of message I want to send,” he says. “It's a very important record for me and I think being able to sing something like that also showed me that country radio has accepted me for who I am. And I feel really lucky to be where I am in my four-record career.”