Did Carly Pearce Just Admit to Bribing a Cop?
Carly Pearce would never get in trouble with the law, especially in her beloved home state of Kentucky -- right? Well...not so fast.
The singer shared the whole wild story on Twitter, in a video post that also showed the singer doing her makeup. "I'm doing my makeup, and I'm gonna tell you about the time that I had a warrant out for my arrest," Pearce says at the beginning of the video.
It all started back in the early days of the singer's career, when she was on radio tour to promote her 2017 debut single, "Every Little Thing." One of her flights got canceled in between stops, so Pearce and her band rented a car so they could get to the next city they were supposed to hit.
"So I was driving through the great state, my home state, of Kentucky, and I did not realize that the speed limit went very quickly from, like, 70 to 35, and let's just be real, I was already going 85," she recounts. As one might expect, a police car pulled them over.
"I could tell he was really annoyed, but we had to get to the show, so I didn't look at the speeding ticket until I got the venue a few hours later and realized I had a reckless driving ticket," Pearce goes on to say. "So, I paid the ticket and thought nothing of it."
And that would have been the end of it -- until she got a phone call letting her know that there was a warrant out for her arrest.
"Because I did not go to traffic school or pay the full amount of my ticket. Because I did not realize that it is a big offense if you are reckless driving," Pearce explains.
When she's onstage, in interviews or accepting big awards, Pearce is known for saying how grateful she is to country music -- and this story proves that she means that in the most literal way possible. In this story, it was actually country music that got her out of jail time.
"You're never gonna believe it, but the cop was a country fan," she explains. "And I bartered my way to pay the ticket and give him tickets to my show, and he dropped the warrant, or the charge, or whatever you wanna call it. So that police officer in Kentucky, thank you. You can come to a show anytime. But yeah, I'm kinda bad."
It's probably for the best that the singer doesn't get into specifics about exactly how this barter took place -- it does sound a whole lot like bribing a police officer -- but all's well that ends well, and Pearce learned her lesson. At the end of the video message, she stresses the importance of obeying traffic laws.
"The moral of the story, y'all, is be aware of the speed limits where you're going. And, it pays to be a country singer sometimes," she concludes, winking at the camera.
Pearce's country career certainly isn't slowing down any these days. She's recently been hinting at a new album in the works. When it arrives, that project will follow up her breakout album, 29: Written in Stone, a late 2021 project that features her No. 1, Grammy-nominated duet with Ashley McBryde, "Never Wanted to Be That Girl."