Carly Pearce Shares the Touching Voicemail She Got From Loretta Lynn: ‘I Love You, Honey’ [Watch]
Carly Pearce stepped into the circle to play at the Grand Ole Opry on Oct. 4 -- the very same day that Loretta Lynn died -- and so it was only fitting that she play "Dear Miss Loretta," the song she wrote in tribute to the country legend for her 29: Written in Stone album in 2021.
But Pearce had a surprise for the audience: Before she played her song, she shared the voicemail that she got from Lynn after she first heard the younger star's tribute. Pearce pulled out her phone and held it up to the microphone so that the Opry crowd could hear the message in Lynn's own words.
"Hi Carly, this is Loretta, honey," it begins. True to form, Lynn's message for Pearce combines sweetness with dry, deadpan humor: "I'm layin' in bed, taking it easy. I'm fixing to get up and wash my face maybe, comb my hair. I don't know. I ain't got no place to go, have I?!" Lynn's voice continues.
"But anyway, I love your song. Thank you, sweetheart," she goes on to say. "I love you, honey. Come and see me sometime."
As she listened to Lynn's words, Pearce began to tear up onstage -- even though, as she told the crowd at the Opry, she'd been listening to that message quite a bit since hearing about Lynn's death.
"I've listened to that message a lot today," she said, "and if that does not capture the purest form and the essence of her beautiful soul, I don't know what else does."
Pearce's full performance of "Dear Miss Loretta" from the Opry stage is available to watch now; in the full clip, the singer also reflects further on Lynn's monumental impact on her and on country music as a whole.
"We absolutely lost one of the greatest that there ever was and will be, and as I stand here tonight, I feel overwhelmed with the legacy and the beauty that she is and she was," the singer noted.
A member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1962, Lynn celebrated her 60th anniversary of joining the Opry just days before her death. "Time flies when you're having fun!...It's still the most magical place in the world and holds so many wonderful memories for me!" she wrote in a tweet on Sept. 25.
Lynn died on Oct. 4 at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. at the age of 90. "Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills," a statement from her family read.
Memorial details for Loretta Lynn have not been announced. She leaves behind four children and was preceded in death by two children and her husband, who died in 1996.