Carly Pearce is recalling a big career moment that didn’t exactly go off without a hitch. The country singer took to Instagram to share the story of how she knocked out her front teeth just one week before her first CMA Awards performance in 2020.
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The situation began at a Halloween party, which Pearce attended dressed up as a cat.
“I was going down the stairs, and I fell,” she said. “It was one of those kind of falls that you don’t catch yourself, so I landed straight on my mouth. It knocked me out. I remember waking up to my friend FaceTiming my mom to show her what had happened.”
The next day was Sunday, but Pearce managed to get emergency appointments with her dentist and plastic surgeon.
“When I made it to the dentist, we realized that I had almost bit straight through my mouth. I had to get skin removed in here and get seven stitches put in my bottom lip,” she said. “I spent the afternoon with a dentist who was able to put a fake piece on each of my front teeth and told me that I could come back after the CMAs to get root canals.”
“I then went over to the plastic surgeon,” Pearce continued, “and for the next week before the CMAs, I had to go to him every single day, and he would lay compresses on my face and scrape.”
Carly Pearce Recalls Her 2020 CMA Awards Performance
Thanks to visits to the dentist and the plastic surgeon, as well as consistent Aquaphor use, Pearce’s “face looked pretty normal to be able to go to the show, at least from far away.”
Up close, however, was a different story.
“At one point during the show, my friend leaned over to me, that was my date,” Pearce recalled. “She goes, ‘Your lip is bleeding.’”
Even with a bleeding lip, a lisp, and loose teeth, Pearce took the stage to perform “I Hope You’re Happy Now” alongside Lady A’s Charles Kelley. The song, which Pearce released with Lee Brice, won Musical Event of the Year at the ceremony.
“I did it, and I made it, and it was all fine,” she said. “I ended up winning Musical Event of the Year. The events that had to all happen for me to make it to the show to then win was a moment that I’ll never forget.”
The day after the CMAs wasn’t a time for celebration for Pearce, but rather three root canals. The whole thing went down unbeknownst to viewers, who mistakingly attributed a whole other cause to Pearce’s swollen lip.
“I had to read about press and all of the people online talking about what a bad lip job I got done,” she said, before revealing all of the work she’s undergone the last few years.
“I’ve been an Invisalign for the last five years,” she said. “My teeth have been reconstructed on the bottom several times, because they chip off.”
To this day, Pearce said, “I can never bite straight on.”
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for CMA
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