It’s a new era for Kelsea Ballerini. The Tennessee native just announced her new album, Patterns, out on October 25, with “Sorry Mom” from the record out now. Ballerini, who used an all-female team to create Patterns, hints that the entire record will be honest and vulnerable, as evidenced in “Sorry Mom.”
The song begins with “Sorry, Mom, I smelled like cigarettes / And my eyes were Casa red / With a pounding in my head / Showing up again on Sunday morning / You just made the eggs / And turned your head.”
“I couldn’t have started a song with ‘Sorry Mom I smelled like cigarettes,'” Ballerini reflects. “But that was the thing with these writers: everyone was encouraging and pushing to go further into the way we really live. And it’s all there in ‘Sorry Mom’: chasing dreams, walking away from school, losing my virginity, walking away from college.
“But the best part of the song is – in the fullness of time – I can appreciate how she felt about all of it,” she continues, “I can understand why. We can both look back on those times, knowing it was part of the journey, and it’s part of a lot of people’s journeys… But when you look at everything that happened, it turned out pretty well. To me, that’s what you can’t know ‘til you’re here.”
“Sorry Mom” is just one of the songs on Patterns that tells Ballerini’s truth now, after coming through a public divorce with singer Morgan Evans, finding love again with actor Chase Stokes, and discovering more of who she is as an artist, songwriter and human. When creating Patterns, Ballerini went on a writing retreat with her producer Alysa Vanderheym, plus Hillary Lindsey, Jessie Jo Dillon, and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild to craft the songs that are on the forthcoming album.
“There was an unpresumed feeling of knowingness that happened on that retreat,” Ballerini shares. “I felt safe, so then I was able to feel honest, and then more so, creative. We were all, as songwriters, in tandem but more so as women just in a real heart flow of it all. Having these heroes and friends champion the process and the guts of it all has been one of the joys of my career.
“Disassembling and sorting through the habits and nuances of ourselves, and then those that we love the most, is a chapter I am still in and will always stand by,” she adds. “I’m really proud of that story through music.”
Ballerini kicked off her career with feel-good tracks like “Love Me Like You Mean It,” “Dibs,” “Legends” and more. The Grand Ole Opry member had a surprise success with Rolling Up The Welcome Matin 2023, six songs she wrote to help her process her complicated feelings about the end of her marriage to Evans. Now happily in love with Stokes, Ballerini hints that listeners might be surprised at the complex emotions she lays bare on Patterns.
“I think that people probably expect this really happy-go-lucky, love, mushy, gushy record from me. That’s not the case,” Ballerini tells The Associated Press. “And I’m really proud of that. It would have been easy to, I think, just collect the really beautiful parts of my life that I’ve dusted off and found the last couple of years. But that’s not the fullness of my experience.”
Patterns is Ballerini’s fifth full-length studio album, and one that Ballerini worked hard to strike a balance between honesty and commercial appeal.
“It’s my job to make a record that has something for everyone. But that comes from making a record that’s true to me, and that’s what I did,” Ballerini states. “And so, I just hope people feel something … Whatever it is.”
Pre-order of Patterns is available here.
Ballerini will serve as a coach on Season 27 of The Voice in 2025. Find “Cowboys Cry Too” and all of Ballerini’s music and upcoming shows at KelseaBallerini.com.
Photo Credit: John Russo