Amid the ever-present marketplace demand for positive, uptempo recordings, country artists who take a contrarian position with stark, tragic ballads are sometimes rewarded on the awards circuit. Grammy Awards or nominations have been granted through the years to such spare titles as Sugarland’s “Stay,” Ronnie Dunn’s “Cost of Livin’,” Cole Swindell’s “Break Up in the End” and Reba McEntire’s “She Thinks His Name Was John.”
Carly Pearce’s “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” enhanced with a guest appearance by Chris Stapleton, seems an instant contender for that kind of reward. Released by Big Machine on June 16, it artfully weaves a raw vocal performance across a vulnerable music bed as it portrays a couple so resigned to a passionless existence that the two people barely acknowledge each other. If a song could make bones ache, “We Don’t Fight Anymore” would do it.
“I really don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of a song,” she says.
Pearce co-wrote “Fight” with Pete Good (“Tale of Two Towns,” “Y’all Life”) and Shane McAnally (“half of my hometown,” “Some People Do”) at Good’s studio in Nashville’s Berry Hill neighborhood on a day when their initial ideas all failed to jell. “Fight” emerged from conversation.
“I don’t remember who said, ‘We don’t fight anymore’ — it was probably Shane — and I was like, ‘Let’s go sad. Let’s do it,’ ” she recalls. “Pete played this riff that was so inspiring. He has such a good melodic sense and also such a way of building a track that inspires you. From five minutes in, I just felt like we were on to something.”
None of the three were working out personal problems. Pearce, in particular, was in a relationship at the time, so even though her last album, 29, was built around a divorce, “We Don’t Fight Anymore” was not an extension of that project.
“Many of us have been in a relationship at some point where it’s kind of running on fumes,” says Good, “so there’s enough to tap into and then, obviously, take liberties to be a storyteller.”
McAnally served up the opening line of the chorus — “We don’t yell, ’cause what the hell/Difference does it make” — using a bold, attention-getting internal rhyme. They purposely stayed more subtle the rest of the way.
“A lot of times, when you have a line like that, you want to beat the rest of the song to death and match it,” McAnally says. “But the rest of it has to soak in. That top of the chorus brings you back into the song, and then the rest of it just happens.”
Pearce guided much of the melody, from the verses’ conversational notes to the melancholy, descending prechorus and the heartbreak range of the chorus. “It’s Carly’s gift,” says Good. “She’s just one of those natural singers and creators of melody. It’s just inspired, whatever she’s singing, and it’s got so much heart behind it.”
They wrote a bridge for a single voice, begging for any shred of possibility the couple could end the stalemate — “I wish you would say something, say anything” — then called it a day. Good developed a demo, and he came up with a short, aching riff for the intro that would be repeated through much of the song. “It sets the stage so well,” McAnally says. “Somehow in that lick, I hear the story. I don’t know how he does that.”
Pearce was so pleased with the results that she teased one chorus on Instagram in early September, though she later removed the post. She also shared “Fight” and six other songs with Big Machine Label Group president/CEO Scott Borchetta, and he was such a big believer from the outset that Pearce and her crew felt empowered to develop the song without considering any preconceived commercial blueprint.
“He got it, even from the beginning, what the song was going to be,” says co-producer Josh Osborne (Midland, Jon Pardi). “We were fortunate to not feel any of that pressure of, ‘Hey, let’s add a bunch of bells and whistles.’ We just leaned into a great song. It speaks for itself.”
They recorded the instrumental tracks at Nashville’s Sound Emporium on Nov. 15, the same day that Pearce picked up her first Grammy nomination, for the Ashley McBryde collaboration “Never Wanted To Be That Girl.” Guitarist Ilya Toshinskiy and Dobro player Josh Matheny re-created Good’s key riff, guitarist Sol Philcox-Littlefield employed a shimmering tremolo effect that highlights the couple’s instability, and pianist Alex Wright dropped notes here and there that helped develop a sense of movement without stealing attention from the basic story. Fiddler Jenee Fleenor heightened the track’s lonely quality in overdubs, and drummer Aaron Sterling was asked to reimagine the original percussion, transitioning the kit from a time-keeping tool to a more atmospheric element.
The song’s heartbreaking quality posed a potential challenge when Pearce cut the final vocals. It required her, and the producers, to stay in that fragile space long enough to record multiple, believable takes. “It’s not method acting,” Osborne says. “It’s not that hard, but she definitely wanted to be in the character and in the moment of the song. And so once she got in there, she was willing to stay in there and keep going.”
As work progressed, Pearce began thinking about Chris — who previously won a Grammy for “Either Way,” a similarly spare song about a broken couple — as a vocal partner. She reached out in January to his wife, Morgane Stapleton, who said they would consider it, but also warned he would pass if he wasn’t really into the song. Pearce waited weeks for an answer. Unaware of that overture, Big Machine meanwhile decided “Fight” should be the first single from Pearce’s next album. Morgane called to say yes on Feb. 4, the night before Pearce won her first Grammy, and Chris called at a later date during his drive to the studio to get creative input from Pearce. She told him she wanted harmonies, but to feel free to add anything that he felt. He took command of the bridge and raised the song’s emotional quotient another notch.
“It unlocked the whole other side of the story in a very unexpected way because you don’t typically hear somebody come in on a bridge that has only been singing harmony,” says Pearce. “It just turned into something so cool because he trusted his gut.”
Pearce went back to the studio to adjust her vocal in the bridge to Stapleton’s performance, and McAnally cut and pasted a wailing cry from the song’s final moments to the end of verse two.
The plot of “We Don’t Fight Anymore” never quite arrives at a conclusion, but that’s also part of its attraction. It resides in the ache, and the authenticity in the performance practically guarantees that “Fight” will have an impact on playlists and the awards circuit. Still, as real as it sounds, Pearce insists that she’s only playing a character this time around and that fans should not read anything into the song’s difficult emotions.
“I came on to the scene with a heartbreak ballad, and I’ve always been a storyteller that said things that were uncomfortable,” she notes. “Who I was long before 29 is still the same girl.”
