Sounds like second time the charm for Carly Pearce.
The Kentucky native is gearing up to release her fifth studio album Honest Woman, which will be out everywhere on August 28th, and she has put out several singles over the last few months, including “Church Girl,” “You Can Have Him,” her duet with Riley Green, “If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay,” and most recently, a bluegrass song inspired by her Kentucky roots with Dan Tyminski and Molly Tuttle called “What If You Loved Me.”
It’s shaping up to be a stellar album, and while she’s been doing a ton of album promotion, Carly shared a pretty personal video on TikTok where she discussed her decision not to have children. Of course, it’s a very personal topic, and there are plenty of country stars who never had children, and Dolly Parton comes to mind as the best example. Miranda Lambert is a stepmom, Kacey Musgraves never had any kids, and I’m sure they all have their reasons.
It’s a very important job, and if you don’t feel called to do it, it’s not the kind of thing you should take on just because you think you should, and Carly said just that in her video:
“Okay, so here’s the deal with this. And I don’t know, maybe some of you out here are like me. I always feel bad saying that I actually don’t want children. I love children. I love my friends children. I’m a great aunt, but it was never my dream.
My dream was to pursue country music and live on the road, and I know that some people do that, and they’re great at it, but it has never been my dream. And I think that we should normalize people that truly know they don’t wanna have kids. I don’t think it should be for everyone just because society tells us to.
So I don’t want children, and I’m totally okay with that.”
But she does have dreams to be married again, as Carly was famously married to fellow country musician Michael for about eight months in total, from October 2019 until she filed for divorce in June of 2020.
Carly has discussed the breakup publicly before, previously telling Bunnie Xo that she knew the night they got married she “shouldn’t have,” and Carly and Michael were ultimately only married for about eight months in total, from October 2019 until she filed for divorce in June of 2020:
“At the time, his career was rising, and honestly, like, he was more successful than me, and when our relationship started, it was like, ‘Oh, this is so exciting.’ I think we both got caught up in that, like, ‘Oh, everybody is so excited about this.’ Genuinely, I got married to go the distance. I absolutely did.
When I married him, it was for the right reasons. I think that, when you travel like this, and I thought I was doing the right thing by waiting to get married until I was 29. But we didn’t have real conversations, and we didn’t really know about each other.
We were kind of living this life that wasn’t really reality, looking back on it. I just think we didn’t know each other. We were just in it. We were in it. And you know, I knew the night I got married I shouldn’t have, if I’m being completely honest with you.”
Carly is currently in a relationship now, and she says she hopes to get married again, calling her first marriage a “start up marriage”:
“And I absolutely wanna get married again, and intend to get married again, and will never let my past hinder me from doing that again. So what I was divorced? It was my start up marriage, and now I get to have the real one.”
I think this kind of thing is something a lot of women hesitate to discuss publicly, especially someone with a platform like hers, and it sounds like she is a great aunt and is exactly where she wants to be in life, with a huge album about to come out that stands to be one of the best mainstream releases of the year:
@carlypearce Replying to @Donna Comer Keep the questions coming. 🤍👇 #Countrymusic #HonestWoman #CountryTok #MusicTok ♬ original sound – Carly Pearce
“You Can Have Him”
“What If You Loved Me”
“If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay”
