Since her divorce from fellow country music artist Michael Ray in 2020, Carly Pearce has been outspoken about the split and the fallout from it — most prominently on her 2021 EP 29 and its follow-up album 29: Written in Stone.
Songs like “What He Didn’t Do” and “Diamondback” delved into the emotional tatters of the split. In a new interview on Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast, Pearce notes that the things she wrote about on the 29 projects were pulled from real life.
The former couple initially met in 2018 and married in 2019, which Pearce described as all happening too fast. “I thought he was so cute. I’d heard he’s the nicest guy in the world,” Pearce recalls. “I invited him to my [Billboard Country Airplay] No. 1 party for ‘Every Little Thing.’ Looking back on it, it was a hot and heavy lust. It wasn’t love. It was just passionate.”
She added, “I got married to go the distance. When I married him it was for the right reasons. I think when you travel like this, I thought I was doing the right thing to get married till 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. I think we didn’t really know each other. I knew the night I got married that I shouldn’t have. I think the best thing that ever happened to me was COVID, because it allowed me to deal with that in private. I think that I probably would have stayed in it longer if I could have avoided it, and not had to… I was embarrassed when it happened…and was heartbroken.”
Pearce filed for divorce less than a year after their wedding. “It wasn’t what I signed up for,” she said, reflecting on the brief marriage. “It just wasn’t the marriage that I know I deserved. I knew that very quickly. We were only married for eight months. Plenty happened to where it was very clear to me this was not, this just wasn’t a marriage.”
Asked if there was infidelity within the marriage, Pearce responded that her 2022 Billboard Hot 100 top 40 hit “What He Didn’t Do” “wasn’t just written out of thin air. … It wasn’t good.”
But Pearce also stressed that she’s ultimately thankful for the lessons learned from the marriage. “Thank you, because you taught me how strong I am. You put me through things that have made me better now. And I don’t wish him evil. I don’t wish anything on him. I’m so glad that I’m not in that anymore,” she said.
When Bunnie Xo asked about a possible “Jolene” in the situation — referencing the title mistress from Dolly Parton’s 1973 country classic — without naming any names, Pearce simply said, “Let’s just say I’m not a fan of her. I’m not a fan of him. I could’ve done so much more than I did.”
Pearce also noted how she had hoped for direct answers in the marriage.
“It’s tough to think that… just leave me instead. I shut my mouth for so long, because I felt like I had to. And I’m not here to blow anybody up. I don’t care anymore. When you are faced with somebody that was a really dark season for you, and then they go and blow it up on the Internet, like…also, you go, ‘I don’t know if he told her we were divorced.’ I don’t know. All I know is … that was not a fun situation for me. i think what’s harder is at the end of it, you want somebody … who is gonna look you in the eye and say, ‘Yeah, I did this.’ … But I never got any of that. I had to piece together a lot of things after the fact. But they were facts.”
A few months after the news of the divorce was made public, fans began speculating that Ray was dating Tyler Reese Tritt (daughter of country singer Travis Tritt), after photos surfaced of the two together.
During the Opry 100 celebration earlier this year, which was televised from the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Pearce and Tritt made headlines when Pearce performed “Jolene” during the television special. When some online commenters noticed that the cameras didn’t pan to show Tyler Reese Tritt until after Pearce’s performance, Pearce herself commented, saying, “Aw don’t you worry, I looked right at her.”
Last year, Pearce followed up her 29 projects with Hummingbird, featuring the Chris Stapleton collaboration “We Don’t Fight Anymore” and “Truck on Fire.” “We Don’t Fight Anymore” was nominated for a Grammy Award (Pearce, along with Ashley McBryde, previously won a Grammy for best country duo/group performance for “Never Wanted to Be That Girl”). “We Don’t Fight Anymore” was also nominated for musical event of the year at the CMA Awards.
In 2023, Ray released the single “Spirits and Demons,” featuring Meghan Patrick, and released the EP Dive Bars & Broken Hearts.