Carly Pearce still can’t believe she is the reigning CMA Female Vocalist of the Year. The Kentucky native, who was crowned the winner in November, is still coming to terms with her title, even after all this time.

“I stare at it quite often,” Pearce admits to her record label. “It’s really still hard, even eight months later, to process to you what was happening to my body and my heart in that moment. But it just felt like 31 years of hoping and praying and wishing and working to make country music my life. And that’s something that I think forever will be one of the greatest achievements of my life. But even now, I mean, I clearly almost fell to the ground when it happened, and I still just kind of can’t process it. Maybe one day I’ll process it, but it was so special.”

When Pearce won, she was helped to the stage by her “Never Wanted To Be That Girl” collaborator, and fellow nominee, Ashley McBryde. Pearce wept as she accepted the accolade.

“I really didn’t think this was going to happen,” an emotional Pearce said at the time. “I want to thank my record label, Scott Borchetta and Big Machine Records … I’ve had just a crazy year and I just want you guys to know that this means everything to me. Country music saved me in a time that I needed it, and I just want you guys to know that this is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Pearce celebrated another milestone in 2021: joining the Grand Ole Opry, another dream she held in her heart since she was a little girl.

“There are a lot of things that I could say, and I’ve tried to think of how to sum up what this means to me,” Pearce said after Trisha Yearwood officially inducted Pearce into the Opry. “The best way to describe it is, when I was a little girl, I dreamt of country music, and I dreamt of singing on this stage. And my grandma, my Mamaw and my Papaw Pearce, I always told them that if I made it here, they would be front row. And they didn’t get to see that happen, but I really do genuinely feel like they’re here with me tonight. And I know that it was my dream as much as it was theirs.”

Pearce has said her current single, “What He Didn’t Do,” is the last single she plans to release from her 29: Written in Stone album.

“I wrote ‘What He Didn’t Do’ at the end of 2020 with Ashley Gorley and Emily Shackleton,” Pearce said in a video shared on YouTube. “It was actually the second song that we wrote in the day, which sometimes that’s the one that really hits. I remember driving away and thinking, ‘Wow, I think this song is special.’

Pearce is spending the next few weeks on the road with Kenny Chesney on his Here and Now 2022 Tour. Find music and tour dates at CarlyPearce.com.

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