Kelsea Ballerini might be one of country music’s leading hitmakers, but she isn’t about to limit herself to one genre. The Tennessee native, who famously recently interrupted her own concert to inquire about a song on Taylor Swift’s set list, has big goals and ambitions for herself, ones that extend far behind the boundary lines of country music.

“I want to play arenas,” Ballerini tells the New York Times, “I want to be the main draw. I want the pyrotechnics. I want to cross over, dare I say.”

Indeed, Ballerini will play plenty of arenas over the next few months, when she serves as direct support of Kenny Chesney, on his I Go Back Tour. But she is ready, perhaps more than ready, to be like the artists she grew up wanting to emulate, with each tour bringing her one step closer to that dream becoming a reality.

“I have a little baby hydraulic lift on this tour,” she said. “I think it brings me ten feet in the air. And all of a sudden, my legs are like Bambi. I’m terrified. But I like it.”

Ballerini’s last full-length album, Subject to Change, was released last September. She also dropped the vulnerable and painfully honest EP, Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, on Valentine’s Day, chronicling the end of her almost five-year marriage to Morgan Evans. For that project, she wrote three of the six songs by herself, enlisting Alysa Vanderheym to co-wrote the other three.

The 29-year-old has said on record, multiple times, that she always wants to write the songs she records. But now she reveals it’s partly because of who she is as an artist, and partly because she recognizes the uphill struggle female artists continue to face.

“I have this insecurity that because I’m blond and I’m glittery and I like production, that people don’t take me seriously as a songwriter,” Ballerini admits, “The underlying tone is, ‘Hey, I did this by myself. I didn’t have a man in the room.’”

Ballerini wrapped up her Heartfirst Tour in time to head out with Chesney, before she returns for the final leg this summer. With a recent No. 1 hit, with her ‘half of my hometown” collaboration with Chesney, her recent Saturday Night Live debut, and a popularity that is at an all-time high, Ballerini couldn’t be happier about where she is, or where she is going.

“I feel really seen, and understood, as an artist right now,” Ballerini says.

Find music and tour dates at KelseaBallerini.com.