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Kelsea Ballerini: ‘Your 20s Are For Self-Discovery’

Author Nancy Brooks // Country Writer, Beasley Media Group

Kelsea Ballerini has been the “it girl” in 2023 with career milestones including a soldout headlining tour and an impromptu album release, Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, which garnered Kelsea a coveted nomination for CMA Album of the Year. She is also a nominee in the CMA’s Female Vocalist category this year.

With all that momentum, Ballerini sat down and posed for a cover story in Nylon magazine. In the article, she admits, “I’ve always had this complex that people don’t think of me as a credible artist, that people just are like, ‘Oh, she got signed to a label, and she had a number one right off the bat, she’s blond, she’s glittery, she posts stuff, she’s this personality.”

She added, “That’s the thing that I care about the actual least. I have fun with all of that, but I’ve never cut a song I didn’t write. I never will.”

RELATED: Kelsea Ballerini's 'Vibe' On Taylor Swift Travis Kelce Romance

In that frank interview, Kelsea also admits that now that she’s 30, she can look back at the mistakes she made in her twenties. She said, “Your 20s are for self-discovery, for f—— up, for trying your best, for succeeding in some and for failing in others. And I did that. I did all of that, and I stand by it. I experienced so much that I was lucky to get to do in my 20s…”

Ballerini’s team posted a bunch of photos from the new magazine shoot on Instagram. They captioned the post, “Introducing NYLON’s 2023 It Girl cover star, @KelseaBallerini. After channeling a public divorce into the best music of her career, the singer is saying goodbye to her 20s and hello to new love.”

“I literally feel like there was not one more drop of my 20s I could have wrung out,” the country star says. “I’m ready to be a grown-up now; that’s so hot to me.” At the link in bio, Ballerini sits down with @mccarthylauren to talk about embracing what’s next.”

Top Five Fun Kelsea Ballerini Songs

  • "Yeah Boy" (2016)

    A fun song found on her debut album, “The First Time.” The music video for the song is an ode to the 1990s. Ballerini is shown performing the song in a colorful bodysuit in front of a neon backdrop and a brick wall spray-painted with graffiti, with female backup dancers. When the song came out, Kelsea was touring with Rascal Flatts and headlining her own “The FirstTime Tour.”

  • "Heartfirst" (2022)

    This is a song on Ballerini’s “Subject To Change” album, which seemed to catapult her to a new level of fame. Kelsea wrote the song with Alysa Vanderheym and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild in July 2021. According to Ballerini, it was the first song that she ever wrote where she did not come up with the title first; instead, the opening line, “Met him at a party / Accidentally brushed his body / On the way to get a drink at the bar” was the first lyric she wrote for the song.

  • "Dibs" (2015)

    The fun song she named her dog after. The official music video for “Dibs” premiered on October 22, 2015. The video consists of footage Ballerini took while on tour in York, Pennsylvania, Greenville, South Carolina, and St. Leonard, Maryland, performing in front of live crowds, celebrating her 22nd birthday, and spending time with her dog. The chorus sings, Yeah, I’m callin’ dibs / On your lips / On your kiss / On your time / Boy, I’m callin’ dibs / On your hand / On your heart / All mine.”

  • "Hole in the Bottle" (2020)

    Kelsea happily joins the country music ranks with a drinking song; a remix of the song featuring Shania Twain was released five months after the original single came out. The music video begins with a vintage black-and-white style with Ballerini dressed in flapper wardrobe reminiscent of the 1920s. Once the first chorus hits, colored scenes are introduced, and she is shown in a house painting a portrait of her dog Dibs in a field with a couple of friends who join her in lounging on a bed and performing a dance routine with the singer and playing chess with herself.

  • "If You Go Down (I'm Goin' Down Too)" (2022)

    This song is a gem and puts Kelsea in the same company of “fun” murder songs like the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.” Ballerini said when the song came out, it was actually to evoke thoughts of the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise” and The Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.” She told us then, “We really wanted to lean into a very ’90s country feel, and so we brought in fiddle for the song, which I think to me makes it. That’s also why there’s a Chicks reference to it, which everyone picks up on, which was absolutely intentional. I didn’t want to make it sound like anything else on the record. I wanted it to be its own moment.”

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.

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Author Nancy Brooks // Country Writer, Beasley Media Group
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