Carly Pearce recalled showing up at the 2020 CMA Awards looking “beat up” after knocking out her two front teeth.
“I had seven stitches in my lip because I almost bit through my lip seven days before I was up for my first CMA Award,” Pearce recalled during an appearance on Bunnie XO’s podcast, “Dumb Blonde.” “And it was during the pandemic when, like … only the artist got to go.”
“I don’t tell anyone,” she said. “I do all my interviews at my house. My face looks insane. I had to get like bonding and stitches and the whole thing. And I ended up going to the award show. I took my best girlfriend. She’s still my best friend from childhood. And I’m sitting there and like my lip starts bleeding because it’s like so messed up. She’s like, ‘You gotta, like, pat your lip.'”
“I looked like I got beat up,” Pearce added.
COUNTRY SINGER CARLY PEARCE SAYS DOCTORS ‘DISMISSED’ HEART CONDITION SYMPTOMS: WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Pearce won her first CMA that year, taking home the musical event of the year award for her collaboration with Lee Brice on the song “I Hope You’re Happy Now.” She also performed at the award show.
She didn’t speak publicly about her injury at the time, despite speculation over the cause of her swollen lips.
“I fell and knocked my two front teeth out,” she eventually told E! News. “I had a bunch of stitches in my mouth, looked completely different than what I looked like right now, and it was kind of scary because I knew I was going into the biggest week of my life.”
“It looked really bad. It was scary,” she added. “I was just really fortunate to get doctors that helped and knew the pressure I was under. But with every day, I was like, ‘Please Lord, let my face heal so I can do this,’ because this is such a huge moment.”
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Five years later, Pearce recalled the buzz surrounding her facial injury. “Of course, I wake up the next day and all these radio stations are like, ‘Carly Pearce had a bad botched job of her lips being done.’”
“And I’m like, ‘No, I don’t. No, you have no idea. You have no idea what I’ve gone through.’ Like my teeth were moving,” Pearce told Bunnie XO.
The country star explained she didn’t clarify what actually happened to her mouth because she didn’t want to “rock the boat.”
“I think for so long, I’ve been afraid to like, rock the boat. And I didn’t – I just didn’t want to feed into it. But if you saw these pictures, they were insane.”
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Pearce has since been more open about her health.
The “Should’ve Known Better” singer announced she had been diagnosed with an “intense” heart condition called pericarditis in May 2024. Pearce claimed that her health condition was initially “dismissed” by medical professionals, but she continued to press doctors until she received answers.
“My biggest piece of advice for anybody is: Listen to your body, and be your own advocate … a lot of doctors dismissed me, and I was persistent until I got a diagnosis,” she told Fox News Digital at the time.
Pearce has been living with the heart condition for nearly five years and has been experiencing flare-ups since 2020.
“I had a really debilitating chest pain that was only relieved if I bent over like this (leaning forward), and that’s a classic symptom of pericarditis,” she previously explained to “Today.”
“And then when you lay back, it gets way worse, because that wall is kind of inflamed around your heart.”
She added: “I just had a really intense shortness of breath, like almost having to suck through, like, a straw.”
