Kelsea Ballerini is almost ready to share her new album with the world. The singer-songwriter has completed her next project, the follow-up to Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, a painfully honest collection of tunes that forever impacted how Ballerini will write and release music.
“The record’s done, and so I can speak as a whole thematically, it is a record from a 30-year-old woman,” Ballerini says on Apple Music Country’s Today’s Country Radio. “And I am really proud of that because I really wanted to take the sentiment that I learned through Welcome Mat of stop rounding the edges. The more specific, somehow the more universal. And if I just write my experience and kind of zoom out of my overall life right now, and then zoom into specifics, whether it be growth and self-reflection or new love or evolving relationships with my parents at this stage in my life.
“Whatever it is, those are all bigger topics on the next project,” she adds. “I write about those things in the most filterless way that I could have. And I learned that from the last record … I’ll] always, always honor [the Rolling Up the Welcome Mat] chapter. And I’ll always sing those songs with so much passion and pride. But we’re moving on.”
Included on her new album is her current single, “Cowboys Cry Too,” a duet with Noah Kahan. It’s a song that continues with Ballerini’s theme of being honest and open in her music.
“I always just thought, ‘I think this song could be more impactful if there was a male counterpart that would go there to just rip open his chest and bare his soul and tell his side of that story,'” Ballerini says. “And I’m such a fan of Noah … He is so willing to just be so open and vulnerable.”
Ballerini started “Cowboys Cry Too,” and left the second verse for Kahan to write, with his lyric almost magically matching what she intended for the song
“We got in the studio together the week before the ACMs where we were performing anyway. And he was like, ‘All right. Let’s pull up the track,'” Ballerini recalls. “So we did. And he was like, ‘This is just what I’ve written. Hadn’t seen it before or anything. Just let me know what you think. No worries if we want to change anything.’ And he sang it word for word for what his verse is. And I was so grateful because he didn’t round any edges. He was like, ‘Here’s my story, here’s my perspective.’ And I was just like chill bumps on chill bumps. I was so grateful.”
Now that it’s done, the East Tennessee native admits she was terrified to work on the follow-up to Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, knowing what fans would expect from her moving forward.
“I was really, really nervous on how to follow up Welcome Mat, just because it changed my life and my career so much,” Balleirni recently admitted to People. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how to … where do I go from here?’ That was about such a specific experience that I’m no longer in, and it took me a couple months to figure out what that looks like.”
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.