Carly Pearce releases debut album!

Carly Pearce is currently the topic of conversation in the States after her debut single Every Little Thing is slowly climbing the Hot Country Songs Chart and the Country Airplay Charts. It’s quite a feat nowadays for a solo female to make it into the top ten on the airplay charts but she’s currently sitting in the number 3 spot. But 27 year old Carly has been trying to crack the Country music market for some time now after dropping out of high school at 16 to move to Tennessee and perform at Dollywood 5 times a week. After an up and down rollercoaster ride in Nashville with a failed development deal with Sony but independent success with Every Little Thing on Sirius XM’s The Highway, Big Machine signed Carly and re-released her single, made a music video and now she’s here with her debut album… and did I mention it’s quite brilliant?

The album has a number of big named writers on it and the first song, Hide The Wine introduces some of those big names, Ashley Gorley, Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey, if you add all their number 1 songs together it exceeds 60 songs! The song itself with Carly’s vocals is sonically not too dissimilar to Maren Morris and the next song definitely reminds me of a young Taylor Swift. Careless has a very catchy chorus, it definitely sits in the pop country category but I love the melodies and that banjo! This is the first we hear of Carly’s songwriting ability as she teams up with Emily Shackleton. And it’s these two along with hit writer Busbee who wrote the single that is climbing up the charts, yes track three is Every Little Thing. It’s an unusual choice for a lead single as it’s a very stripped back, slow song that has a lot of space in it. This space allows us to hear Carly’s beautiful vocals better, she has the right amount of emotion in her voice and great technique when she uses her falsetto.

The fourth track Everybody Gonna Talk is probably my least favourite on the album. It has a fairly common lyrical theme of being with someone knowing that everybody’s going to talk and gossip about it. The next track Catch Fire written by Natalie Hemby and Busbee has a sense of attitude about it, I can definitely hear Natalie Hemby’s input in this, she has a way of writing that has this upbeat kind of sass to it. But my favourite track on the album and my favourite song at the moment has to be If My Name Was Whiskey, not just because my Hamsters called Whiskey but because this song sticks in your mind and lyrically each line leads straight to the next, setting up that hook line brilliantly and this is written by Pearce, Busbee and the great Shane McAnally. The chorus Melody is powerful and almost sung with a little desperation which adds to the theme of the song well. Colour follows, it’s got a great instrumentation, the whole album is very well arranged and produced which cements it in the Country Pop genre, this track melodically reminds me a little of Sam Hunt at the end of the verses leading into the chorus, there’s a fast rhythmical feel to the vocals.

I Need A Ride Home could be a Carrie Underwood hit song, I mean it is written by Ashley Gorley, Hillary Lindsey and Matt Jenkins but you can hear the similarities and it’s very well written. Carly has great vocals as well. Doin’ It Right is co-written by two writers I’m not familiar with but it’s a catchy song, it has a strong chorus. This is followed by Feel Somethin’ this is another Busbee, Hemby, McAnally written track and the melody of the verses is quite unusual but when that chorus comes in it feels much bigger and it has some great lyrics. You Know Where to Find Me Follows and it’s the same writing team as Every Little Thing. The chorus soars in this I feel, it really opens out. This next song is another one of my favourites Honeysuckle written by Busbee, Hillary Lindsey and Barry Dean. The verses have some detailed lyrics “Some memories are made out of paper They burn like a high school cigarettes” I really like this metaphor. The album closes with Dare Ya, this again could be a single, there’s no album fillers on here really and this song has a chorus that you’ll be humming long after you’ve listened to it.

Though I’ve compared some of her songs to Maren, Taylor and Carrie I can already tell that Carly is forming her own style and sound and I think with a debut album as strong as this she’s going to have a long career, competing alongside these great women at the CMAs and Grammy’s!