Jordan Davis’ Duet With Carly Pearce Needs to Be His Next Single

Jordan Davis’ new album, Learn The Hard Way, arrived on August 15, and while all 17 tracks shine in their own way, one of the clear standouts is “Mess With Missing You,” his duet with longtime friend Carly Pearce.

There’s just something special about a male/female country duet, and Davis and Pearce keep that tradition alive with this heartbreaking track. The song finds the pair fighting the urge to slip back into the pain of missing an ex, even though the temptation is strong.

Throughout the verses, they reveal how they’ve adjusted their lives to cope, avoiding things like listening to Keith Whitley when storm clouds roll in or drinking wine after midnight in an empty bed. The chorus compares the pull of an old flame to whiskey: even a single “sip” of memory is too dangerous, so they avoid it completely to protect their hearts.

“You’re like whiskey, I can’t even have one sip/ Not even just a little bit like I did before/ It’s just too risky, if I start, then I can’t quit/ And all that moving on I did goes out the door/ So I don’t mess with missing you no more,” they sing together on the chorus. 

Their harmonies soar, with production that adds to the emotion of the lyrics without being overdone. 

While Davis is still climbing the charts with his addictive single “Bar None,” here’s hoping “Mess With Missing You” gets its turn as the next single.

The song was co-written by Davis, Paul DiGiovanni, Travis Wood, and Hillary Lindsey. During a recent interview with Country Now and other outlets, Davis admitted that he and Pearce have been wanting to collaborate for quite some time, they were just waiting for the right song to come along. 

“Neither one of us wanted to force anything or just do it because we wanted to have a song together. And we talked about it for so long, but it was finally with this one where I was like, ‘alright, this is it.’ And all I had to do was send it to her and hope she signed off on it. And she did and absolutely crushed it. Such one of my favorite voices out there, so I can’t be more stoked on how that one turned out.”

In a separate interview with Sirius XM’s The Highway, Davis recalled meeting the songstress for the first time nearly a decade ago. 

“I moved to Nashville in 2012, and I moved into this little house in West Nashville, and kind of met like my community of songwriters. And I was bartending one night and we come to the house and there’s some people at the house playing guitar and singing. And I walk in and I hear Carly just singing on the couch with some friends. And I was like, ‘Who is that?’ I was like, ‘Goodness gracious, that girl’s really good.’ And they all looked at me like, ‘Dude, that’s Carly Pearce. You don’t know who that is?,” he shared. “And that was even back then, everybody could kind of see it. So yeah, that was the first night I met Carly, and now here we are a few years later and have a song together. So it’s been pretty, pretty cool.” 

Davis’ Learn the Hard Way also includes a collaboration with Marcus King and the chart-topping “I Ain’t Sayin’.” Fans can catch the hitmaker on tour now on his headlining Ain’t Enough Road Tour.