Carly Pearce is following up her 2020 No. 1 single, “I Hope Your Happy Now,” with the release of “Next Girl.”

Penned by Carly, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, “Next Girl” will impact country radio on Sept. 28. The single represent Carly’s first new music without producer busbee—who passed away in September 2019—by her side. It also represents Carly’s first new music since her divorce from Michael Ray after less than a year of marriage.

“Country music always had these straight-talking women, who were so strong and so sassy,” says Carly. “They were flirty, funny, feisty—and they weren’t afraid of banjos, fiddles, mandolins, steel guitar. Put all those things together, and it’s everything that pulled me to country music as a little girl.”

The new banjo-filled tune serves as a word to the wise regarding smooth-talking guys, as Carly sings: “I bet you probably met him at a bar, let him walk you to your car / I bet he said he never falls this hard, yeah, I remember that part / He knows how to say all the right things, knows how to get you out of that dress / Knows how to make you think you’re the best thing / But I know what happens, next . . . girl.”

“We live in a world where there are so many smooth-talking guys who’re so quick to sweep you off your feet—and they always have a story about the girl before,” says Carly. “So when we were asking ourselves, ‘What would Patty Loveless do?’ we figured not only would she warn the girl, she’d turn over all the cards: how he works, how he talks about the old girlfriend, what he’ll do once he’s got her . . . Josh and Shane know how guys like that work, so we had so much fun carving this song out. Then when it came time to get in the studio for my first real music on my own without busbee, I was a little nervous, but it was also so exciting because as the tracks started going down, I realized: This is who I am at my core. This is the music that flows through my blood, that comes out of my pores. It’s everything I love and loved all in one song, and when it’s rushing by, it just feels good.”

Listen to “Next Girl” below.