Carly Pearce’s New Man Isn’t Joining Her on the CMAs Red Carpet: ‘Flying Solo’

Carly Pearce is throwing some serious sparkle into her 2023 CMA Awards red carpet outfit. "Sequins and velvet," she hints to Taste of Country Nights, joking, "I know it sounds gross, but it's cool."

The singer will have the spotlight all to herself when she strolls down the carpet before the show: She's walking alone, without her new boyfriend B.C. Taylor on her arm.

"We're flying solo! My manager's gonna sit with me," Pearce adds. "But B.C.'s here."

No big surprise there. Taylor is Pearce's drummer, and tours and performs with her full-time — including during her upcoming CMAs performance of her duet with Chris Stapleton, "We Don't Fight Anymore."

"He's in the band! He'll be onstage with me," Pearce clarifies.

Pearce and Taylor soft-launched their relationship this summer, about a month-and-a-half after she broke up with her boyfriend of two years, Riley King. But the country star has always been close with her bandmates, and she acknowledges that her feelings for Taylor may have started to grow before she was even aware of them.

"Probably longer than I want to admit, for me," Pearce says when asked when those feelings first started. "It was never something I voiced, but I just had a really instant connection to him."

There's pluses and minuses to dating someone in your band, she goes on to say, but the positives outweigh the negatives.

"It's really fun to get to share that world. That world is very different, and it's nice having someone out there supporting you that gets it and is quite literally the backbone of your every night," she points out.

"But I mean, if we get in a fight, everybody knows it if we're not looking at each other onstage," she adds with a laugh.

This week, Pearce's focus is all on her big CMA Awards performance with Stapleton, which will be "a total moment," the singer teases.

"I feel like you see Chris in a light that maybe you have never seen before, which is fun, and it's just a powerful song," she describes, adding that the performance will take cues from the song's music video.

"... I think you're gonna feel that tension, I think that's the best way I can say it. You'll feel the tension between the two of us. We go for it."

The 2023 CMA Awards are set to air on Wednesday (Nov. 8) at 8PM ET on ABC. The show will take place live at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena.

*Remember: The best way to watch the CMAs is on ABC, with ToC on your phone.