EVERYBODY HURTS
Kelsea Ballerini’s new country music CD focuses on her insecurities
Country music star Kelsea Ballerini was in Los Angeles on a rare night off last year and decided to call a couple friends — at least one of whom happened to be a celebrity. No one picked up. Anxious thoughts started to race.
“I went into this spiral of like, ‘Oh my god, why did I think I was cool enough to call Taylor Swift? That was so embarrassing, of course she didn’t pick up. Why am I even out here? Why am I writing songs in L.A.? What if I put a beat drop on these songs? Is Nashville going to be mad that I have a beat drop on these songs instead of a banjo? Should I be home right now?” Ballerini, 26, recalled.
To calm down, she turned to the therapeutic method she has used since she was 12 years old: songwriting. She didn’t have a guitar with her, so she wrote a poem: “Sometimes it feels like it’s all real, but nothing here is as it seems / I ask myself, does it feed my soul or my anxiety?” The lines eventually turned into the lyrics for la, the final track on her third studio album, Kelsea.
Kelsea, which features songwriting collaborations with Nashville writers along with Ed Sheeran and Julia Michaels, dives into Ballerini’s insecurities and vulnerabilities. Ballerini has had Grammy nominations, a string of No. 1s on country radio, a headlining arena tour, two certified-gold albums, a platinum-selling duet with The Chainsmokers (This Feeling) and stints on TV shows including The Voice and Songland.
But it’s been a long road. When Ballerini was in high school and travelled from Knoxville, Tenn., to Nashville to start a career, label executives compared her to Swift. After many doors shut in her face, she was determined to make her music stand out.
Her first hit, Love Me Like You Mean It, was bursting with self-confidence, and similar “bops” (Ballerini’s word) such as Dibs, Yeah Boy and Miss Me More followed suit. But this new record has a more introspective tone, Ballerini said, because she took a break from touring and had time for self-reflection.
“I had to get to know myself at 26 and realize that I’m not the same person who wrote the first or second albums,” Ballerini said. “I still have bits of that confidence and that swagger in this album. But it’s definitely paired with a lot more truth-telling.”
Ballerini and Swift became good friends and share a sensibility about fans: If you can relate to them on the most basic level, they will be loyal to you for life.
For years, Ballerini’s fan base has witnessed her go from playing clubs to selling out arenas, saw photos from her wedding to country singer Morgan Evans, and watched her cry with her mom when her second record, Unapologetically, received a Grammy nomination for best country album. But they have also seen her have dance parties, indulge in her love of chicken nuggets, watch The Bachelor and take her dog, Dibs, for walks in the rain.
“Since I first started, I was always like, ‘I just want to be the same person that I am out with my friends or on the couch with Morgan and Dibs that I am onstage,’” Ballerini said. “There’s also a lot of people that I’m seeing right now that are overly filtered, and I don’t want that to be what young girls are thinking is normal.”
Ballerini has always been candid about her challenges. She admitted on Bobby Bones’s podcast in 2017 that she felt like some people in Nashville didn’t find her very “cool” because of her pop-infused country songs.
So when writing this album, Ballerini doubled down on exploring tough questions: “Why am I so anxious all the time? Why all of a sudden am I the most insecure person that I know?” It all culminated during a weekend while she was touring last year with Kelly Clarkson and invited top Nashville songwriters Nicolle Galyon and Jimmy Robbins to join her for a few days on the road.
“For different reasons, we were all in really vulnerable places,” Galyon said. As the three brainstormed ideas, they shared personal details. She and Ballerini both cried. They wrote songs that altered Ballerini’s entire idea for the album. “I think we knew and she knew that she had begun writing the record.”
They wrote a ballad called homecoming queen? about the facade of perfection: Just because things in your life are going right, it doesn’t mean you’re devoid of pain.
Ballerini’s transparency comes through in other tracks: her nerves about connecting with people on overshare; social anxiety on club; feeling jealous on the other girl. However, she felt that homecoming queen? so perfectly captured the tone of the album that she wanted to release it as the first single.
“It wasn’t the traditional bop that I normally put out,” Ballerini said. “But I think it was time for me as a songwriter to really show that side of myself.”
This record features the most “traditional” country songs Ballerini has ever had on an album: the pointedly named a country song; drinking jam hole in the bottle; and half of my hometown, which features backup vocals from Kenny Chesney.
Now that she’s in a position of power, she supports newer artists. When a country radio programmer recently went viral for admitting that her station was barred from playing two female singers in a row (an unspoken rule of thumb in country radio, where women make up only 10 per cent of airplay), Ballerini wrote a long Instagram post and called it “unfair and incredibly disappointing,” especially on behalf of newer singers trying to break in the business.
“I never wanted to say anything that would sound ungrateful,” she said. “But when you see something that blatant ... that was when I need, with as much grace as possible, to try to protect this next round of females that are moving to Nashville.”