Before I can even finish saying hello, Kelsea Ballerini wants to know how my day has been.
She’s just as down-to-earth as I expected, jumping onto the Zoom call in a casual striped crew-neck, genuinely excited to chat about her new music and upcoming Aussie tour.
So, it’s no wonder that when I ask about her celebrity status, she takes a minute to think, eventually scrunching her face and shrugging her shoulders.
Watch the video above.
The lead single of Ballerini’s new EP (extended play) is the topic. Titled I Sit In Parks, the song explores a thought all too familiar to women: Can I have my career and a family?
Ballerini tells the listener a story of sitting in the park, watching a young family – the mother around her own age – and wondering if she’s missed her opportunity to have that life.
“I have this voice note… It’s literally me walking into the park, seeing this family and having that real-time feeling,” she explains.
In writing the lyrics, Ballerini was completely vulnerable, wondering out loud if others might want her freedom as much as she wants to be a mother.
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Is it my fault for chasing things a body clock doesn’t wait for? she sings in the chorus.
Being in the public eye, Ballerini has opened herself to scrutiny from those who view celebrity status as the peak of the mountain.
When asked whether the argument those with fame shouldn’t want for more crossed her mind when writing the song, Ballerini pauses before answering.
“I mean, it’s not very ‘people-pleaser’ of me to say this, but, no,” she says.
“I really didn’t write it for anyone else, if I’m so honest with you. I really didn’t. I really wrote it for myself.”
The way Ballerini sees it, people are allowed to change their minds and share their feelings, no matter the career path they’ve chosen.
“I think it’s different for everyone and every woman and every family, but I know that feeling is universal no matter what you do for a living,” she adds.
“So, I’m sure people have all the things to say about it. I just don’t care. I can’t.”
With the song, Ballerini joins a new era of female musicians opening up about their anxieties and fears about choosing between a career and family.
In 2024, Charli XCX – whom Ballerini “stans” and would love to meet, although she admits she’d “probably be so weird” – released her hit album Brat featuring the song I Think About It All The Time, in which she wondered out loud if she’d missed her opportunity to have a family.
“The coolest thing about women is we’re multifaceted and we’re allowed to want it all, you know?” Ballerini shares.
“And I think saying that out loud is so empowering, and wondering how you get there is so fair.”
Her new EP, titled Mount Pleasant, was a surprise to fans, with Ballerini announcing the project seven days before its release.
Her last album, Patterns, was released in October 2024, but the Grammy nominee explains there is a major difference between her EPs and records.
Where an album takes years to put together, with thought going into including radio hits and songs that will play well live, Ballerini explains she doesn’t think about any of that when writing an EP.
“I’m like, ‘Here you go’,” she laughs, as she mimics ripping her chest open.
“It’s like a think tank of a really condensed period of time that I have felt and found to be really important to me in my life. And this year, it’s just been so full of the highest highs and a lot of heavy moments too.”
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While Mount Pleasant mainly explores the anxieties and fears of feeling like you’re running out of time, her last EP detailed her divorce from Aussie country music star Morgan Evans.
In 2023, she released Rolling Up The Welcome Mat. It quickly took on a life of its own as fans related to Ballerini’s unapologetic emotion, which Rolling Stone described as “moving and intimate … almost private”.
“At first, that really scared the hell out of me,” Ballerini recalls.
“It was obviously very specific and about a very specific time in my life. And, it was loaded. I mean, I had all my feelings on it.”
While the whole EP was a success, it was the song Penthouse that audiences really connected with, now the star of Ballerini’s live set.
“It’s just this song that people felt because, whether you have been divorced or not, we’ve all been in situations where you feel like you’re playing a character of yourself in life.”
Shortly after the EP’s release, Ballerini released a second EP titled Rolling Up The Welcome Mat (For Good), in which she modified lyrics after having moved past her divorce, including the song Penthouse (Healed Version).
And while she doesn’t feel the same emotion and connection to the song that she did three years ago, she explains she now feels those emotions for the fans.
“Now I sing it and I call them the Penthouse girlies,” she says.
“I have the emotion for the stories that I’ve heard, that people have shared with me, that it’s made them feel.
“And that’s what I sing it with now. It feels important in a different way, I guess.”
While Aussie fans haven’t had their Penthouse moment yet, Ballerini reassures me it’s on the setlist for her upcoming shows.
”It’s the encore. Always,” she says.
The last time she toured in Australia was in 2019, with her grand return to Aussie shores kicking off on December 6, with arena shows in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
And while she can’t wait to see the Aussie fans, there’s one thing about Australia that Ballerini hasn’t been able to get off her mind.
When I ask what her plans are for when she arrives, the singer said she can barely wait for me to finish my sentence, bursting at the seams with excitement to tell me what she’s been yearning for all these years.
“Halloumi, immediately,” she says.
“It’s literally my favourite thing.”
Watch the full interview below.
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