Carly Pearce Duets with Hannah Ellis and Jackson Dean and Plays Two Unreleased Songs at C2C Festival in London

“Country made me do a lot of smart things and it made me do a lot of stupid things,” Carly Pearce told a rapt audience at C2C Festival in London on Friday night (3/8) as she delivered a triumphant main stage set.

There was nothing stupid about tonight’s performance though. In a set which included covers of songs by Faith Hill, The Judds and The Chicks, as well as two new songs from her forthcoming album, Hummingbird, due out on June 14th, Carly Pearce put in what will go down as a legendary performance at the UK’s biggest country festival.

Fittingly playing on International Women’s Day, she opened the show with ‘Next Girl’, before slipping seamlessly between her own ‘Easy Going’ and The Judds’ ‘Why Not Me,’ picking up a flaming torch passed down from women of ‘80s and ‘90s country and lighting an Olympic sized cauldron with it.

Following a high energy romp through Faith Hill’s ‘Let’s Go To Vegas,’ Pearce was joined by Hannah Ellis, who stepped into Ashley McBryde’s shoes for ‘Never Wanted To Be That Girl,’ and later on in the night by Jackson Dean for ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now,’ originally a duet with Lee Brice.

The audience at the 02 lit up their phones for ‘Every Little Thing’ and ‘We Don’t Fight Anymore’, before she played the first of two unreleased songs from her forthcoming album.

“I wrote this song about that feeling you get after you go through a devastating break up and I know that every single one of you can relate to this,” she told the audience as she introduced ‘My Place,’ a song she’d also previously teased with an acoustic snippet on her Instagram.

“At this stage of life with social media, whether we want to know what our exes are doing or not, we can conveniently type in their name and see everything that they’re doing and who they’re dating," she explained. "I wrote this song just all about that realisation that it’s hard to let somebody go, it’s hard to see somebody move on, and you still feel that insecurity in wanting to own that place, but it’s not your place anymore”.

“It ain’t my place / to question if there’s someone filling my space,” she sings in what is bound to be an album highlight, written by Pearce with Lauren Hungate and Jordan Reynolds. “It ain’t my business trying to picture four by sixes with her in ’em / If she does things that I didn’t / Wondering what the hell I’m wondering for / It ain’t my place / ‘Cause it ain’t my place anymore”.

Later in her set she performed the unreleased ‘Truck on Fire’, a more upbeat barnburner from Hummingbird written with Justin Ebach and Charles Kelley from Lady A.

“I trust that I have a lot of ‘90s country fans in here,” Pearce teased the audience, before admitting that she used to put on her own bedroom concerts for her “Barbies and stuffed animals” when she was younger, inspired by artists like Trisha, Shania and Reba. Her version of The Chicks’ ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’ in the arena would have had the dolls and teddies going absolutely wild.

It was Pearce’s rendition of ‘What He Didn’t Do’ that received the warmest reception of the night though. A song that has seemingly taken on a life of its own over the last few years, the audience gave the song a two-minute standing ovation that caught the already emotional singer completely off guard.

“I’m glad I’ve only got one more song,” she joked, looking over to Restless Road readying themselves on the Spotlight Stage. “Because anymore and I’d start crying”.

"Sometimes you can use your pain for purpose," Carly Pearce told the crowd before she left the stage. Thank god she used hers for this.

For more from C2C Festival 2024, see below: