Carly Pearce, Chris Stapleton Tell Heart-Wrenching Story On Nashville Stage

Carly Pearce and Chris Stapleton teamed up to deliver a heart-wrenching, first-ever live TV performance of their heartache collaboration, “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” from the Bridgestone Arena stage in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The two Kentucky-born singer-songwriters performed together at the 57th annual CMA Awards.

Pearce teamed up with frequent collaborator Shane McAnally and Pete Good to write “We Don’t Fight Anymore.” The ballad, produced by Pearce with McAnally and Josh Osborne, captures the emotion “about the really painful truth that sometimes a relationship can go cold and be indifferent.” Pearce envisioned Stapleton joining her on the track, and she DM’d his wife, Morgane Stapleton, on Instagram to ask her first (she said in a recent interview on The Jennifer Hudson Show that “I feel like to get to Chris, you got to go to the wife”).

“I’ve always wanted to write music that makes people feel something — whether that is feeling seen, less alone, happy or even uncomfortable. ‘We Don’t Fight Anymore’ felt like I was writing one of those stories that, whether or not we want to include it in our social media highlight reel, we’ve either been there or are living there right now,” Pearce previously said in a statement of the inspiration behind the song. “Having Chris Stapleton join me on this song was a dream come true and he unlocked an element to the story that I didn’t even know it needed.

“When I wrote ‘We Don’t Fight Anymore,’ my cowriters — Shane McAnally and Pete Good — we were just trying to find something honest, as I feel like I always do,” she added to iHeartCountry. “And in this moment, this was not what any of us were going through, but I think Shane threw out the idea, ‘We Don’t Fight Anymore,’ and it was just kind of off to the races at that point. I feel like all of us agreed that this is probably a point that people have been in, in a relationship. Maybe they’re still together, maybe they’re not, maybe they shouldn’t be together, maybe this song will help them. But you’ve always, at some point, I guess, experienced something like this, of just that feeling of indifference. Writing it was super special. I knew it was something that needed to be said, and I remember just really being inspired that day by the track that Pete built and just the really, really honest, almost uncomfortable, lyrics that we were writing.”

Pearce’s heartache ballad with Stapleton comes as fans eagerly await her next era of music, following her smash-hit album, 29: Written In Stone in 2021. Since releasing “We Don’t Fight Anymore” — with a fiery music video starring Lucy Hale and Shiloh Fernandez — Pearce has also debuted “Country Music Made Me Do It” and “Heels Over Head.”

Pearce and Stapleton — who won the Male Vocalist of the Year honor for the seventh time during Wednesday night's show — were part of a star-studded lineup to take the stage at the 57th annual CMA Awards. Other performers included Kelsea Ballerini, Kenny Chesney, Luke Combs, Dan + Shay, Jordan Davis, HARDY, Alan Jackson, Cody Johnson, Post Malone, Mac McAnally, Ashley McBryde, Morgan Wallen, The War And Treaty, Zac Brown Band, Luke Bryan, Jelly Roll, K. Michelle, Little Big Town, Megan Moroney, Old Dominion, Tanya Tucker and Lainey Wilson. Bryan also returned to host the show again with NFL star Peyton Manning.

The 57th CMA Awards is set to air live on ABC from Bridgestone Arena in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee, beginning at 8pm ET/7pm CT. It’s also available to listen on iHeartCountry Radio and on iHeartRadio Country stations nationwide. If you miss the live broadcast, the three-hour show is available next day on Hulu. Watch the performance here: