On her self-titled sophomore album, Carly Pearce sends a message to her younger self with the song "It Won't Always Be Like This." Written by the singer with Natalie Hemby and Sam Ellis, the track is a clear favorite of Pearce's -- and, somewhat to her surprise -- among her fans, too.

Read on for the story behind "It Won't Always Be Like This," as told by Pearce.

It's my story in a nutshell. It's what I want for single two. It's -- I just feel like it's me.

It was the last song that I wrote for the album, and Natalie Hemby and I, and Sam Ellis, we really just bonded. Natalie and I grew up a little of the same, we've had a lot of the same hardship in Nashville, and that song really just wrote itself and completely was my story, but it's interesting to now see that that's a universal emotion that people can insert their own stories into.

I think the second verse in its entirely is me speaking to 22-year-old Carly that was watching everybody get record deals and watching everybody succeed, and I was still in Nashville cleaning AirBnBs. Just the spin on that verse of saying to myself, "The heart won't ache forever / No matter how hard it gets" -- I wish I could go back and tell myself at 22 ... "Hold onto who you are, and don't let this town eat you up," because now i'm entering my 30s and I'm going, God, I wish I just would have enjoyed the time a little bit more and not beaten myself up about why I don't have something.

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