Kelsea Ballerini on the Healing Journey Behind Her New Album, Why She’s Proud of Boyfriend Chase Stokes—and What She Learned From That ‘Call Her Daddy’ Interview

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].”

That first weekend together they wrote the song “Sorry Mom,” a tender apology and love letter to her mother, which Ballerini sent to her. “The first thing she said after it was done playing was, ‘You have nothing to be sorry for,’ which felt like a weirdly healing moment,” she says. What followed was 14 more songs that span the spectrum of Ballerini’s healing journey, from delicate moments of self-awareness and empowering revelations to invitations for love to come back. “What I really think is so beautiful about the camaraderie that we found with the five of us is they wanted me to lead. They wanted me to write my album, and they wanted to support it with conversation,” says Ballerini. “They wanted me to be in the driver’s seat of my album.”

With seven number one singles over the course of her career thus far, Ballerini is a Nashville veteran, but she’s always had crossover ambitions. “One thing that really appeals to me is trying to get into spaces where country hasn’t been yet,” Ballerini says. While she’s grateful for what the industry has done for her, she also knows all too well how fickle the historically male-dominated space can be—especially as a female songwriter tackling modern womanhood on her records. “I think that I realized that to have a career that I wanted, I had to think outside of the city limits of Nashville, Tennessee, and I love Nashville, Tennessee, and I love country music, and I love country radio, and I love the people within that industry that I’ve gotten to align with,” she says, speaking slowly but with intention, wanting to navigate this territory thoughtfully. “But because of X, Y, and Z—people can name it whatever they want, I think we all know what it is—I knew that I would have to, for my own happiness, for my own fulfillment, think outside the box.” For Ballerini that has meant collaborating with artists like the Chainsmokers, taking hosting gigs, and saying yes to sponsorships and appearing in commercials for Pantene and Covergirl. “Those things allowed me to have a career that was not dependent on getting a number one. I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I’m really not, but I learned after seven [number ones] that it’s fickle, and I needed to make sure for myself and for everyone I work with that I was doing the right things to be sustainable in my own career, on my own two feet. Once I started doing that, I felt like no one could take it away from me as easily.”

As a newly appointed judge on the upcoming season of The Voice, Ballerini is hoping a new crop of country singers can learn from her experience in the industry. “I didn’t realize how fiercely protective I am of young women artists,” she says. “I knew that I had a heart for making sure that especially young women feel seen, but my God, in that seat, I’m psychotic about how protective I’m getting.”

All the while, Ballerini has had her own support system in her boyfriend, actor Chase Stokes, whom she has been dating for almost two years. “We are such teammates and we’ve grown to be that. You hear that on the record. You hear a real journey to get to a place that is like, ‘We are a team and a unit, and it feels so good,’ and I’m really proud of us,” she says. “I am really grateful and proud to be with a man and a human and an artist that does not shy away from heart and art and truth telling. The thing that we immediately connected on was the passion for storytelling and the way that makes us feel connected to people. Being able to enable each other to do that in our own careers has really been beautiful.”

After spending the last few years talking about her past, Ballerini hopes this album will shift the focus to the here and now. “The thing I love about Patterns is I think it’s the most present album I’ve ever made,” she says. But she admits that the future is daunting, especially when it includes high and lows, like taking her dog to chemotherapy in between rehearsing for her Madison Square Garden debut. “I think it’s really easy to get overwhelmed when you’re looking at a schedule. Even the next three and a half weeks make me want to bang my head against every available window,” she says only half joking. “I had a breakdown about two days ago. I was like, I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

Back at home in Nashville, Ballerini and Stokes have a saying: “Do the next right thing.” It’s a prompt that helps the couple zoom in and take life in “bite-size chunks.” So what’s the next right thing for Ballerini? The answer is pretty simple. It’s having this conversation. It’s enjoying the crisp New York air. It’s being present.