High School and a Pandemic Won't Slow Down Caly Pearse

New Orleans’ Caly Pearse, by Victoria Conway

Trying to launch a career during a pandemic is hard, but it doesn’t present as many obstacles as you might think.

The pandemic has changed many musicians’ plans, but not Caly Pearse’s. The 18-year-old pop singer from New Orleans is only a senior in high school and she admits that it has been hard to juggle the demands of school and music so far, but that hasn’t stopped her from releasing two singles. In 2020, Pearse released “Summer Sky,” with the help of her co-producer, New Orleans veteran DJ Raj Smoove. The song gained 31,000 views on YouTube since its release in July of 2020, a number that motivated Pearse to drop her newest single “One You Won’t Forget” this January. It matched her debut’s views in little more than a month, and while those numbers leave room for growth, they’re a promising start for a singer unable to play live or meet fans. “Caly has an amazing range and can pretty much do anything,” Smoove says.

We tend to assume that breaking a new artist would involve a lot of touring, grinding out opening gigs in unforgiving bars, winning audiences one fan at a time. That’s a very rock ’n’ roll—and perhaps a very old school—model. Justin Bieber was the first of many artists to establish a fan base first on YouTube, and VH-1’s Love & Hip Hop: New York introduced the world to Cardi B. TikTok started Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” phenomenon and has a number of stars that are hot on the app on the verge of mainstream success. Smoove’s road map for an R&B-based pop singer like Pearse is less fluky, but it’s not logging miles in the back of a sweaty van. 

“Usually, breaking an artist includes a lot of in-person appearances and performances,” he says. “Start out with a small circle and then expand. Because Caly is in high school, we would have started with the talent show circuit, then worked our way up to the colleges in the area, and then moved regionally. Also, radio station events and festivals are good one-offs to hit. Promotions and marketing on top of that helps the push to develop that initial fan base.” In Smoove’s mind, Pearse’s youth actually works in her favor. 

“Being in high school is the best time to start because you have a pool of peers that can instantly become fans,” he says. “When they go out to college, you now have a network of fans and friends everywhere that support you.”

The idea at this point is to get fans invested not just in her music but in her, and its easy to imagine how that would work. In conversation, Pearse is happy, relaxed, and bubbly. It’s not hard to imagine her in the public eye, and her songs so far sound eager to please with catchy melodies and down-to-earth, relatable lyrics. “My music is definitely very personal and relates to what I’m going through at the moment,” she says. “I really don’t write about stuff that hasn’t happened to me.”

Pearse is trying to make the most of 2020 and 2021, but she looks forward to getting in front of audiences in person. “I want my fans to be able to connect with me and the songs through a live performance,” Pearse says. “I have been deprived of live performing which is one of the best parts of what I do.” To help address this, she recently released a live video for “One You Won’t Forget” that features her on stage at the House of Blues. It’s not the same thing as being in the same room with Pearse, but it gives fans a chance to hear her as simply a singer. She stands at the mic largely on her own onstage, accompanied only by an electric piano, which changes the song’s vibe. In the original version, Pearse is projecting, singing about who she hopes she’ll be—“the one who didn’t lose her soul”—and the artist listeners won’t forget. She’s full of confidence and owns the moment, but when she strips the song down for the live version, she trades the original’s hopeful amiability for a more intimate and vulnerable conversation with herself, one where the outcome is less clear.

“This has been my dream since I was four,” Pearse says. “I remember me and my family had a Halloween party and a small karaoke machine, and I took the microphone and sang for the entire night. This has been my dream for so long and the fact that it’s coming true is insane. I know that I’m definitely going to want to be doing this for the rest of my life. I hope that I stay having fun and just enjoying the time that I have with this because this is something that I have wanted for so long.”

Pearse agrees that this is not the easiest time to try to start a career in the music industry. “Launching a career during a pandemic is a rollercoaster,” she says. Smoove is watching her social media engagement and considers it the most organic metric of success. The numbers are good, but not special, though the fans that respond to her do so enthusiastically. At this point, Pearse and Smoove have no choice but to take the long view. The pandemic has changed their timetable and taken some options off the table, but it has also created opportunities. Since they don’t have travel and promotional engagements to deal with, they have time to build a New Orleans-based infrastructure for her career including director Jeremy Cannon, who shot Pearse’s first two videos. They can start to establish her as a brand—as a positive, stylish, down-to-earth young woman who’s not quite finished with being a kid. They can get her ready to capitalize on the situation when travel becomes easier and live gigs become simpler,  

“Live performance gives you the ability to connect with people on a real, emotional level,” Smoove says. “I cannot wait for Caly to give audiences the same feeling I got when I met her and she sang for me live.”

Caly Pearse, by Victoria Conway