On past records, Kelsea Ballerini insisted on having at least one song written completely by herself. “I would tell myself that I was doing that because I needed to prove to everyone else that I was a songwriter,” the country music singer-songwriter says. But this time around, on her fifth studio album, Patterns, out Friday, the 31-year-old was done convincing anyone, and especially herself, enlisting the help of four other female songwriters. “I just know that I’m a songwriter. And you want to know why? Because I wrote the record—with other people—but my fingerprints, my DNA, is in every lyric, in every melody on every song. And I believe that now.”
It’s a fierce declaration that Ballerini makes, sitting up straight in her seat on a busy New York City sidewalk, in a sophisticated turtleneck, miniskirt, and knee-high boots, her self-assuredness like that of an older sister who has been there and done that. It’s a confidence felt on Patterns, an introspective record that examines an earlier version of herself in past relationships and embraces the woman she’s become. “When I look at myself in the mirror, I like myself so much more now than I did even a year ago,” she says. “Certainly more than I did two and a half years ago.”
This transformation didn’t happen overnight. Ballerini’s Saturn return, an astrological phenomenon associated with a period of growth in your late 20s, coincided with her very public divorce from Australian country singer Morgan Evans in 2022. “It was strong. It kicked my ass,” she says. “I mean, 28 to 30 was a trip.” But Ballerini knew that the only way out was through. “I heard my whole life that when you turn 30 as a woman, there’s this thing that happens chemically where you shed the bigger part of yourself that looks for approval in other people and acceptance and validation,” she says. As a self-described people pleaser who spent her 20s in the spotlight, Ballerini was eager to enter this new season of her life.
But before she could arrive there, in the immediate aftermath of her divorce, Ballerini released her most confessional work to date, the Grammy-nominated Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. Seven deeply personal tracks reveal her side of the split, and are in conversation with Evans’s own postdivorce ballad, “Over for You.” She calls it one of the most selfish projects she’s ever made. But the outpouring of support from fans, who connected with Ballerini’s experience, sharing their own similar stories of bravely leaving marriages that no longer served them, proved otherwise. “My therapist calls that impact versus intent,” she says.
She did one interview to promote Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, and then wanted to “move ‘TF’ on,” she says, looking back. That interview ended up being with Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy, the fourth most popular podcast in the country across all platforms, according to Edison Research, which averages about 10 million listeners per episode, as The Wall Street Journal reported. It’s a distressing reminder to Ballerini, who was extremely candid about the dissolution of her five-year marriage. “You get in the room with Alex and she is asking such thoughtful questions and she feels like a friend immediately. So you feel safe enough to open up,” she says. “And I’m an oversharer. I always have been.” Ballerini made headlines for divulging intimate details, from nights spent sleeping on the couch to her prenup, but she looks back at the conversation with no regrets. “I think I’m much more careful now. In hindsight, I see how some of the things that I really just wanted to talk about, the music and getting the music heard, ended up maybe being hurtful. And I think that is something that I’m more aware of now,” she says.
The challenge in starting her next project then became how to move forward while still retaining the same emotional integrity and vulnerability that she captured on Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. She called up four songwriters she trusted—Hillary Lindsey, Karen Fairchild, Jessie Jo Dillon, and Alysa Vanderheym—and whisked them away on a series of writers retreats from St. Louis and Nashville all the way to the Bahamas. “I truly didn’t know where to start,” she says. “I wanted to be around women that made me feel safe and women that made me feel really creative and also women that I would just have a great time with, even if we didn’t get any [music out of it].”
