Carly Pearce’s Honest Woman Is Her Most Unapologetically Honest Album Yet
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Review by Lauren Page | @LiveWithLP
Carly Pearce has officially entered her I said what I said era.
Across her fifth studio album, Honest Woman, Carly dishes out break-ups, bad men, religious judgement, revenge fantasies and one very important relationship rule: never trust a man your dogs do not like.
Released through her new label home at BBR Music Group, the 16-track record feels less like an album and more like a late-night debrief with your brutally honest best friend. The one who will let you cry, pour the wine and then remind you - quite correctly - that he was never good enough for you anyway.
Carly has built her career on turning heartbreak and questionable life choices into country gold, but Honest Woman goes much deeper than another collection of break-up songs. She is divorced, dating, doubting, growing, comparing herself to everyone else and trying to work out why life refuses to follow the neat little timeline she once imagined.
Basically, she is one of us.
Dream Come True opens the album by asking what happens when you finally get everything you wanted - and discover the dream came with a bill nobody warned you about. Success has cost Carly missed moments, relationships and parts of a normal life. It is raw, uncomfortable and a bold way to start.
But Carly is clearly done avoiding the difficult conversations. On Church Girl, she calls out the judgement and double standards placed on women of faith, while She Don’t celebrates the women who refuse to stay inside the lives other people planned for them. It feels like Carly speaking to her younger self and telling her to stop worrying about what everybody else thinks.
Then, praise the country gods, the sass arrives.
You Can Have Him is the musical equivalent of handing another woman your problematic ex, wishing her luck and blocking them both. It is gloriously old-school, deliciously petty and has enough bite to make Loretta Lynn proud. If he can be taken that easily, babe, please take him. We're only half way through and I am eating up every track on this album.
How Long drags us back into the painful reality of knowing a relationship is finished but not quite being ready to walk away. That vulnerability does not last long, though, because WWJD is waiting around the corner - and no, Carly is not asking what Jesus would do.
The J stands for Jack Daniel’s, and Jack has apparently chosen violence.
Dark, dramatic and slightly unhinged, WWJD is Carly Pearce revenge country at its finest. Same Circus continues the chaos as she realises she may keep dating different men, but somehow always ends up in the same toxic relationship.
Different clown, same circus. We have all bought a ticket.
Then comes Happy For Myself, which may be one of Carly’s most painfully relatable songs yet. She watches friends get engaged, married and achieve the milestones she still wants, while wondering when it will finally be her turn. She is not bitter - she genuinely is happy for them - but good news can still sting when it reminds you of everything missing from your own life.
Just when we need a distraction from the emotional damage, Riley Green appears.
If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay is a flirty, messy situationship anthem between two people who know exactly how badly this could end. Are either of them making the sensible decision? Of course not. That would make a terrible country song. Their chemistry carries the entire story, proving Carly can create just as much drama with a duet as she can alone.
I Don’t Have the Heart makes the romantic situation even messier, placing Carly between the person she wants and the person who wants her. Nobody is completely innocent, everyone is emotionally confused and somebody is definitely leaving heartbroken. Now this is country music.
Thankfully, He Don’t Like My Dogs brings back tongue-in-cheek Carly at exactly the right moment. And honestly, if the dogs do not approve of him, why are we wasting an entire song discussing it? Throw the man away.
Leave My Heart Alone keeps the energy playful with flirtation, fiddle and a chorus already begging to be screamed back at her live. However, Who’s Lying Here, featuring Dan Tyminski, reminds us that Carly is not always the heartbroken heroine. This time, she might be the one emotionally checking out - and I love that she is willing to admit she can occasionally be the problem too.
Then we meet Daisy, and things get darker. It's a track that stops you still, you listen to every lyrics and begin to see everything collide in a story so cinematic you can practically see the entire film playing out. Carly has always known how to build a whole world inside a three-minute song, but Daisy is storytelling Carly at her most chilling.
She fully embraces her bluegrass beginnings on What If You Loved Me, with Molly Tuttle and Dan Tyminski adding gorgeous harmonies to all that longing, regret and wondering what might have been.
Finally, Why God Why Me brings everything to a quieter close. Carly looks back at what she has survived and wonders whether she experienced it all so her story could eventually help somebody else through theirs.
There is no perfect ending, no shiny bow and no claim that she has finally figured life out. Thank goodness - because we would not believe her if she tried.
As a fan, a reviewer and someone who simply loves country music, no era of Carly Pearce has ever sounded as unapologetically and beautifully her as this one.
Honest Woman is Carly spilling the tea, admitting when she was wrong and occasionally plotting revenge with Jack Daniel’s. She does not have every answer, but she is brave enough to say the things everyone else is thinking.
And honestly? Country music is far more fun when Carly Pearce refuses to keep her mouth shut.
Honest Woman by Carly Pearce is out now