Following the release of her transcendent new project – Mountain With a View – Kelsea Ballerini took to the stage in London at O2’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Having always been an assured and confident performer, this performance in London delivered something even greater. Over the past year, since the release of her SUBJECT TO CHANGE record and this subsequent EP, Ballerini has tapped into herself, delivering a more mature and vulnerable performance that enables her to access a deeper connection with her audience. Nowhere was this more evident than in this set in London. Over the course of 20 songs, she gave the audience her heart, from the vulnerability of the encore performance of ‘Leave Me Again’ to the the charisma and energy ‘You’re Drunk, Go Home,’ Ballerini demonstrated the depths of her abilities as a stalwart performer.

Doubtless, the performances of her new tracks, ‘Penthouse’ and ‘Leave Me Again’ were the easy standouts of the set that left her audience spellbound and emotional – Ballerini showed both her vocal capabilities and her easy ability to relate to her fans – but her cover of The Chicks’ ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’ and of ‘This Feeling’ acted to show her capacity to bridge both country and pop. More than anything, the set was a delight, showing an artist on the cusp of super stardom.

1. SUBJECT TO CHANGE
2. THE LITTLE THINGS
3. HEARTFIRST
4. Love Me Like You Mean It / Dibs / Yeah Boy
5. LOVE IS A COWBOY / Cowboy Take Me Away (cover)
6. half of my hometown
7. IF YOU GO DOWN
8. hole in the bottle
9. YOU’RE DRUNK, GO HOME
10. Homecoming Queen
11. This Feeling
12. UNIVERSE
13. WEATHER
14. Penthouse
15. Peter Pan
16. I GUESS THEY CALL IT FALLIN’
17. Leave Me Again
18. MUSCLE MEMORY
19. Miss Me More
20. DOIN’ MY BEST

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The trope of divorce albums and songs has become well-known in country music and is well-trodden territory – a theme explored better in some places than others, from The Chicks’ Gaslighter to Kacey Musgraves’ star crossed and Carly Pearce’s 29: Written in Stone. The best projects (like Pearce’s 2020 project) are those that dive into the very mess of a breakdown of a relationship – exploring both sides’ ‘blame’ at its demise and displaying an almost uncomfortable honesty and vulnerability. Kelsea Ballerini’s new project Rolling Up The Welcome Mat does this from start to finish. Kelsea, herself, details of the EP “Here’s my healing journey. Here’s my heart. Here’s my truth. I’ve never been this open, I’ve never been this bold, and I’ve never been this proud of my art. So with love and respect, I’m rolling up the welcome mat.” This is Ballerini’s best work to date. No contest. It’s raw, open, vulnerable and immensely universal in the mess and pain that it explores.

In Chapter One and Two, Ballerini offers her answer to her ex-husband, Morgan Evan’s question, ‘When was it over for you?’ on ‘Mountain With a View.’ She details the growing distance between the two, physically and mentally. ‘I’m wearin’ the ring still, but I think I’m lyin’ / Sometimes you forget yours, I think we’re done tryin’ / I realize you loved me much more at twenty-three / I think that this is when it’s over for me.’ It’s a delicately, musing song that explores just why the ending became sour. There’s personal touches and notes throughout the tracks that make the songs feel both deeply personal and universal – what happened with the broken plate? ‘Just Married’ is a clever track about the loss of love – ‘Yeah, it was love / It really was / Then it was just married‘ – as Ballerini shows that she couldn’t cope with taking on the full emotional heft of the relationship. With bare touches of production, Ballerini’s vocals and lyrics are given full attention in these tracks, giving the emotion its full weight.

Ballerini shows again on ‘Penthouse’ the messiness of knowing moving on is the right thing, but the pain of leaving a relationship and the bitterness that can ensue. ‘I kissed someone new last night / But now I don’t know where you’re sleeping, baby / We got along real nice, until I wanted out, now I know you hate me / One day, the curtain started coming down / We changed the second we were moving out.’ There’s the pain of being in the wrong relationship, the pain of losing love and of moving on. Of course, there’s a degree of sass punching through on the final line ‘I just bought the house that we saw / You said it was wrong / I wanted it all along‘ that is carried through on the pop punch of ‘Interlude.’ Indeed, Chapter Five, ‘Blindsided’ is Ballerini’s most unforgiving as she questions how her ex did not know what was coming. ‘Baby, were you blindsided or were you just blind?‘ As she punctuates the mellow pop funk of the song with a recording, ‘It’s not fucking news to you, babe / You’ve been in this relationship, it’s not news to you.’

Finally, Ballerini finds peace with her ex and herself on ‘Leave Me Again,’ an acoustic track as she lovingly wishes her ex the best, ‘I hope when I see you that you smile / I hope that you find somebody new / I hope that you get the house, and the good wife, and the kids / And I hope I never leave me again.’

Above all, this new EP from Ballerini is a powerful ode to the messiness of love and loss. It’s Ballerini at her best – raw, vulnerable and honest, with open songwriting that is universal and deeply personal. This project is a triumph and will be a healer to many.

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Sony Music Nashville/River House Artists Georgia Webster has kicked off an exciting 2023, with the news that she will support Kelsea Ballerini on her HEARTFIRST TOUR in the UK. The tour will begin in Manchester on the 22^nd February, followed by Glasgow and Birmingham before culminating at London O2 Shepherd Bush Empire on the 25^th February. For tickets to the UK tour please click here.
 
Georgia Webster released her EP, Chapter 1: Things We’re Not Saying at the end of last year (listen here).  The EP features the tracks “I Hate Phone Calls (Long Distance Sucks)” and “Risk” ft. Jonathan Hutcherson as well as four additional tracks including “X’s,” the song that originally garnered the attention of Kelsea Ballerini and has now over 3 million global streams.
 
“This tour is a dream,” says Webster.  “I get to play my new music on tour with one of my favorite artists in country music.  I can’t wait to visit the UK and play the new songs and support Kelsea”.

Kelsea Ballerini Heartfirst UK Tour Dates:
 
February 2023
22^nd – Manchester                     O2 Ritz, Manchester 
23^rd – Glasgow                          Queen Margaret Union
24^th – Birmingham                     O2 Institute
25^th – London, UK                      O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

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Sometimes albums pass you by, the singles more hyped than the meat of the material, with the artist putting their best tracks up front without much to back it up in the album tracks. SUBJECT TO CHANGE is not one of those records. After the disappointments Kelsea Ballerini clearly experienced with the release of her self-titled record – something she acknowledges on ‘DOIN’ MY BEST’ – she has taken stock and released a vulnerable and interesting album, both sonically and lyrically. It feels as though she has not taken herself too seriously on this record and instead released the music that she wants to release – and it’s an abundantly joyful new era that acknowledges the pain of the past, combining her pop sensibilities with her country roots with a newly found maturity.

Shortly before the release of SUBJECT TO CHANGE, Ballerini announced her divorce from husband Morgan Evans. Seen through this lens, the opening notes of the album are the hopeful and optimistic notes of a new era not just in her professional, but also her personal life as she takes on a new re-direction in her life. The track is a joyful celebration of this new era and the unexpected turns of life. ‘I’m subject to going from zero to feelin’ obsessed / To happy and laughin’, then being upset / But if one thing’s the samе / It’s that I’m subject to change.’ It’s an optimistic and vulnerable note to kick off the album. On this title track, she admits her own shortcomings and complicated nature, an idea that she carries throughout the album – nowhere more notably than on ‘WALK IN THE PARK.’ ‘Sometimes I’m a summer day, sometimes I start raining / Always one season away from everything changing / I’m always looking for greener grass, on a carousel that goes too fast / Up and down like a swing set heart, I’m no walk in the park.’ It’s a whimsical take on her own musings on her self identity, acknowledging her flaws, making her immensely more charming in so doing.

Riding out the disappointments of the past few years has clearly been done with the help of a legion of friends, the importance of which she acknowledges on the bold and immensely fun track – ‘IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO)’ – on which she sings of the ride and die nature of a friendship. ‘I keep all your secrets by the dozen / You know where my skeletons sleep / Hypothetically, if you ever kill your husband / Hand on the Bible, I’d be lyin’ through my teeth.’With the help of a stunning banjo and fiddle part, Ballerini delivers a riotously fun track drenched in 90s country flair – a song bound to become an anthem to friendship. She returns to this idea on ‘I CAN’T HELP MYSELF,’ a bold and brash track on which she admits her inability to turn down a night out with the girls. It’s the very boldness of the track that underlines Ballerini’s ability to bridge the pop-country gap on this album – following the footsteps of her idol Shania – a note that she just missed on album three, as she grooves along on the track, with an underlying sassy backing retorts and a delicious strings part.

Despite the news of her divorce, there’s plenty of hope and celebrations of love on the record, nowhere more notably than on two of the lead-out tracks; ‘THE LITTLE THINGS’ and ‘HEARTFIRST.’ On the former, Ballerini celebrates the simplicity of true love – ‘Back to the basics ’cause they’re bigger than they seem, yeah / Give me that typical, simple love, it’s the little things, mm.’ There’s a delightful groove that underlines the track that is carried through on ‘MUSCLE MEMORY’ where Ballerini  indulges in the pop sensibilities she found on kelsea, though it’s more maturely done. ‘My hands know just where to be / It’s muscle memory / And yeah, my body won’t forget our history.’ ‘HEARTFIRST,’ though, was a gem of a track to introduce this new era for Ballerini, artfully combining those pop sensibilities with a delightfully country-infused production, as she sings about having to be bold and fearless, falling ‘heartfirst’ when it comes to love. Finally, she hammers home the magical and celestial nature of love on ‘UNIVERSE.’ ‘Baby, you make the impossible / Feel like it’s all logical / Lying in your arms, could be Jupiter or Mars / You say I hang the stars in your eyes / But you put the universe in mine.’ Couched in a pop-tinged production, the track is compelling and charming.

There’s plenty of vulnerability and sadness on the album, but you have to dig a little deeper to get to it – this is no country ballad filled break up album. So, ‘LOVE IS A COWBOY’ much as it can be read as a love song, can also be a musing on the fleeting nature of love. ‘Makes your heart feel like wild horses in your chest / Trying to catch, it’s like tryna tame a wild, wild west.’ It’s a glorious track, with a cinematic instrumentation conjuring images of the Wild West itself.

Ballerini takes the theme further on ‘I GUESS THEY CALL IT FALLIN,’ where she muses on the concept of ‘falling in love. ’‘I guess they call it fallin’ ’cause you еnd up on your face / Sleeping by myself in a bed I didn’t make / Think it’s written in the stars ’til you’re all alone / Did you only get me high to let me go?’ Though the lyrics may be despondent, the tone of the track is elevated as it is couched in a more resplendent LA pop production that prevents it becoming a good old-fashioned country break up song. So too, ‘WEATHER’ offers another chance for Ballerini to dance out the toxicity of an old relationship. ‘I’m so tired of your weather / Stormy when we’re together / Yeah, we used to be sunny and seventy-five / We wеre dancing, baby, rain or shine / Had my dress in your drеsser / Now somehow, I need a sweater / How’d we go from summer to cold as ice?’ 

The last four songs on the record though are perhaps her finest work to date. Kicking off with her resplendent collaboration with Carly Pearce and Kelly Clarkson – ‘YOU’RE DRUNK, GO HOME,’ a riotously fun anthem in which the three women, each of who has gone through a well-publicised divorce, offer a brush-off to the drunken men who stumble across their path. ‘The way you’re slurrin’ and the way you stumble / Ain’t no way you’re gonna get my numbеr / Hey, walk away / So me and my girls can do our thing / I ain’t lookin’ for a one-night rodеo.’ It’s witty, clever and quick – combining three extraordinary women’s talents into a juicy, sassy and punchy number. 

The three final tracks shift the tone. ‘DOIN’ MY BEST’ will intrigue even the most casual listener, with its hints about the downfall of her marriage (‘And therapy for one turned / Into therapy for two / When you get married that young, you got a lotta shit you gotta get through’) the disappointments of her last record (‘2020 was a weird year / Album dropped at a weird time’) and the demise of her friendship with Halsey (‘I was friends with a pop star / I put ’em on track four, but / Wish I could take it back, I would’ve nevеr asked / If I knew we wouldn’t talk anymorе’). Despite the seemingly salacious undertones, it’s artfully done and a track worthy for more attention than just headlines.. Don’t let ‘MARILYN’ pass you by – it is a spell-binding track, and incidentally the only solo write on the album for Kelsea, as she muses on this lush piano ballad about what lay behind the perfect face of Marilyn Monroe. ‘Was it worth it to seem so perfect? / Blonde and curves didn’t keep you from your skeletons / Was it lonely, show pony? / Did you miss Norma Jeane? / Or did you always wanna be Marilyn?’ It is no big stretch to see the parallels that Ballerini and Monroe share, and understand the true downsides of fame, and living your life with people holding their own divorced understanding of who you are aside from your real identity.

Finally on ‘WHAT I HAVE’ Ballerini takes stock on where she now is in life. ‘Cause I got a roof over my hеad / I got a warm body in bed / I’m doing alright right where I’m at / With what I havе.’ Through it all, on SUBJECT TO CHANGE, she seems to offer a definition of exactly who Kelsea Ballerini is today.
SUBJECT TO CHANGE offers proof – if you ever needed one – of Ballerini’s exceptional ability to tell a story. It’s an album that exudes joy and optimism, as she enters this new era in her professional and personal life. There’s a sense throughout the album that Ballerini is shaking off the shackles of who people think she should be and stepping into her true personal and musical identity. It’s an album that engages and improves with every listen, with more to unpack in the lyrics and instrumentation with each re-listen. More than anything though, it is immense fun and riotous joy that will stay with you long after you’ve finished with Track 15.

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Kelsea Ballerini has certainly transformed since her first studio album ‘The First Time‘ back in 2015 that thrust her into the spotlight. ‘Unapologetically‘ saw her take an increasingly mature look at her life and her situation, so ‘Kelsea’ her third studio album sees Ballerini getting increasingly introspective at various aspects of her life. Sonically, the album is a move away from her Nashville roots imbibing many elements of the ‘LA’ music scene where she wrote most of this record. The record is diverse in the material that it covers, from feeling like an outsider and not fitting in in ‘LA,’ to seeking emotional support from her female friends in ‘Love Me Like A Girl,’ to being emotionally raw and vulnerable in ‘Homecoming Queen?’ There is definitely a sense that Ballerini has matured in the years since ‘Unapologetically’ in 2018, however the sonic diversity of the record begs the question of where she wants this new record to take her. At times, the songwriting and production on this record move firmly into a new pop sound. Even when she is writing with a host of Nashville-acclaimed songwriters, including Nicolle Gallyon, Ross Copperman, Jimmy Robbins and Shane MacAnally, the sheer number of writers on several tracks seem to suggest that Ballerini is moving further toward pop writing, where a greater number of co-writers appear on each track. Indeed, ‘The Way I Used To’ has seven co-writers, something unheard of on a ‘country’ album.

The record opens with the track ‘overshare’ that Ballerini herself, for some time, believed would be the title of the track. The phrasing of this track is incredibly clever, with Ballerini tripping easily over her vocals, a clever track detailing her own tendency to ‘overshare, because I over care, about the person over there who’s completely unaware.’ Ballerini offers a refreshingly funny and honest portrayal of her own insecurities and psyche. From the off, Ballerini sets her sonic agenda, to bridge the gap between pop and country, and this track does stick firmly in the head. However, unlike her previous material, the lyrics do not feel clever but err into cloying. So too, follow up track ‘club’ finds Kelsea singing about not wanting to go to a club in a very ‘millenial’ sounding track. 

Kelsea is – for me – at her best stripped back and lead out single ‘homecoming queen?’ is one of the high points of the record, seeing Ballerini get raw and vulnerable. Perhaps this is why the rest of the record doesn’t quite seem to stick, where the strength lyrically and sonically of this track does not sum up the record as a whole. Instead, the track sticks out, lending to the somewhat disjointed feel of the record as a whole creation.

‘the other girl’ is one of the weaker points on the record. Halsey, who seems to have been somewhat adopted into the country family since her duet with Lady Antebellum, overwhelms the track with her throaty vocals. Though, her vocals do compliment Ballerini’s softer tone, Halsey’s part overwhelms throughout as they together try to work out who ‘the other girl’ is in the relationship with a cheating man. This is one of the moments on the record, when Ballerini firmly stakes her claim in the pop world, unlike the forgettable trio of tracks that follow. ‘love me like a girl,’ ‘love and hate’ and ‘bragger’ don’t quite hit the mark in what they are all achieving to do, attempting to straddle country and pop, they instead land in no man’s land.

Surprisingly, pre-released track ‘Hole in the Bottle,’ a fun and playful song about Ballerini’s love for wine, is one of the most ‘country’ moments on the album, reminiscent of Brad Paisley’s ‘Alcohol.’ The track is incredibly catchy, with unusual but perfectly delivered production, opening with a vintage speech about a woman encouraging people to enjoy liquor in the healthy way, before Ballerini moves in singing about her capacity to finish off a bottle of wine, blaming it on the ‘hole in the bottle of wine.’ The track is clever and fun, and is bound to be a hit in her live sets. Followed up by ‘Half of my Hometown,’ these two tracks together form the high point of the record. Here, Ballerini gets reflective about the town where she grew up – Knoxville, Tennessee – divided between those who moved on and those who held onto their glory days, ‘still talking about that one touch down.’ The addition of Chesney’s distinctive vocal is the masterstroke here to make it the standout track on the record, it is both catchy and full of nostalgia. The magic in the lyrics is supplied by Ballerini’s ability to empathise with both sounds, acknowledging that she herself is nostalgic for her hometown. ‘All I wanna do is make them, proud.’

This moment of magic is broken in the record with forgettable track, ‘the way I used to,’ – incidentally the track packing the biggest punch in terms of pop songwriters, including Cass Lowe (Boys, Charli XCX) and Julian Bunetta (One Direction). The track, detailing an inability to move on from an ex-lover, is filled with pop-tinged production, and feels like an unnatural transition from ‘Half of my Hometown.’ So too, ‘country song’ is far from country – titling the track thus does not make it one – and actually seems more like a thank you to the genre that has served a purpose.

Final track in the album is Ballerini’s solo write on the album, ‘la,’ revealing her complicated relationship with the pop capital. At first glance, the track reads as a poor little rich girl track, but beneath the surface are instantly relatable themes on feeling insecure and left-out. As Ballerini herself revealed in an interview with Bobby Bones, the track, more than other, shows her moving on from the genre in some respects. ‘Will Tennessee be mad at me?’ The track more than anything sums up the record as a whole, Ballerini’s place somewhere in between pop and country, and her indecision between the two and whether she will settle in LA. For me, this is where the weakness of the record comes in – in trying to imbibe both, Ballerini achieves neither. With the record ending on this track, it feels clear that Ballerini is setting the stage for the next phase of her music and career, movement away from her Tennessee roots. It is to be determined whether the country scene will embrace this transition.

Standout Tracks

homecoming queen

half of my hometown

hole in the bottle

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