Kelsea Ballerini often pictures herself on a surfboard, paddling out to sea. For the past decade, she’d ebb and flow with the tide, catching breaks as they appeared on the horizon. “I wondered if my career would just be patience and small waves,” the country star tells NME from her sun-lit home in Nashville. Next to her lies a stack of bluegrass hymns. “I was learning to adapt and be happy with that.” Then, she caught the biggest swell of her career, and it promptly pulled her under.
The wave came in the form of ‘Rolling Up the Welcome Mat’, her critically acclaimed 2023 EP that turned her private life into public fodder. The project and its accompanying self-directed short film depicted the intimate details of the dissolution of her marriage, striking a nerve with those experiencing similar heartbreak. But it also left Ballerini grappling with the vulnerability of sharing her pain so openly. “I was riding it, but it happened to be about something hyper-fragile and emotional,” she says. “I was trying to find that balance while also being in a new part of my life that was very much on the shore. It took me a minute to get my footing.”
Looking back on that period of her life, she feels mixed emotions. “I don’t regret anything,” she shares. “I’m proud of the music. I’m proud of the way it connected with people. I’m not so proud of the way that it affected certain people in the process. You live, and you learn.”
Right now, though, the 31-year-old is focused on staying present – embracing the moment rather than dwelling on what’s behind her. When she talks, there’s a sense that she’s always in motion, constantly evolving and doing things. She’s propelled by an internal drive, never content to sit still for too long. This energy is her way of coping; staying busy, she says, is how she navigates the uncertainty of life. “I gotta find a hobby… I need to chill out,” she jokes, though her restless spirit betrays her. She’s always onto the next project or idea, finding comfort in the work.
When she finally came up for air after ‘…Welcome Mat’, a bruised ego in tow, she felt like a “mess” emotionally. Yet, through it all, she gained a new perspective. She started to ask herself tough questions. What is it that I love? What is it that I’m hitting walls with? And what am I contributing to both? The process was both revealing and transformative. “My life really does look unrecognisable compared to a couple of years ago. And I mean that in every way – me as a woman, where I live, how I value home, my relationships, my relationship with my partner – it all looks very different.”
She also confronted the ways she’d been holding herself back creatively prior to ‘Rolling Up the Welcome Mat’. “I had unintentionally been rounding the edges of my music for a long time because I wanted it to be for everyone,” she reflects. “I wanted it to be palatable and relatable, so I would leave out the details of myself. It was still my story and my heart, but I kept the details of me out of it.”
All of this self-reflection ultimately led to ‘Patterns’, her fifth studio album, out today (October 25). The project was forged in the mercurial flames of her Saturn Return, an astrological period of growth and transition marked by the end of one’s twenties. “My Saturn Return kicked my ass so hard, in the best way,” she says. “I feel like ‘Patterns’ really does cover the last chapter of that.” The result is an album that captures the lessons learned from her journey through heartbreak and self-discovery, offering a rawer, more authentic sound and Ballerini at her most honest.
“I had unintentionally been rounding the edges of my music for a long time because I wanted it to be for everyone”
‘Patterns’ defies expectations in more ways than one. “I was really aware that people thought that I was going to make two things: a pop record and a mushy-gushy heart-eye emoji record. I really wanted to challenge both of those things,” she explains. Instead, Ballerini chose to explore themes that dig deeper, creating a project that leans into her country roots while offering a fresh take on love and identity. “In some ways, this is one of the most country records I’ve made… We wanted it to feel musical and alive.”
Songs like ‘First Rodeo’ showcase Ballerini’s country-pop sensibilities, a lush swirl of strings and hazy synths, while ‘Deep’, musically inspired by SZA’s ‘SOS’, leans into sensual R&B. “Entering my thirties, making really hard choices, it’s all paid off and made me feel better in my skin and my body than I ever have. This song is celebrating that,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been confident putting out a song like that a few years ago.”
Another one of the album’s standout tracks, ‘Nothing Really Matters’, delves into her tendency to overthink. The dreamy song’s origins are rooted in a grounding mantra she often repeats to herself. “I can get really existential… Sometimes, I’ll look in the mirror and go, ‘Kelsea, you are a ball of energy in a meat suit on a rock in space. You’re OK.’” This philosophy – seeing life’s problems in a broader context – helped her find the throughline of the album. “Truly, all that matters is love and being loved… when you just think about the idea that we’re literally just in a meat suit on a rock, it helps you get out of your head.”
Creating ‘Patterns’ also allowed Ballerini to face her own artistic boundaries. After the unexpected success of ‘Rolling Up the Welcome Mat’, she found herself at a crossroads, feeling pressure to follow up a deeply personal project: “I came at it from a place of fear, really.” To help her get out of her head, she reached out to her longtime collaborator and friend, Alysa Vanderheym. Together with songwriters Hillary Lindsey, Jessie Jo Dillon, and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild, they gathered in an old house just outside of St. Louis for a three-day writing session (“It kind of felt like maybe [the house] could have ghosts, in the best way,” she muses.) It was there, cocooned in a “bubble of womanhood”, that the album began to take shape. “The first few songs that we wrote for this record were ’Sorry, Mom’, ‘Two Things’ and ‘Baggage’. And those run the full gambit of the record,” she says. “There’s depth, there’s levity, and there’s storytelling.”
Reflecting on the process, Ballerini admits, “I learned that if I was just a little more forthcoming with the full version of the truth that I feel comfortable sharing with the world, that works better.”
Creating ‘Patterns’ exclusively with women wasn’t a calculated decision but a natural evolution of the project. “Honestly, I would love to tell you that I made this really savvy executive decision to not let a man touch this album,” she laughs. “That’s just how it happened.” For Ballerini, it turned out to be “the most fun I’ve ever had making a record”. The creative process unfolded over a series of intimate writing retreats – one in St. Louis, another near her hometown in East Tennessee, and a final retreat in the Bahamas. Each location brought a unique energy, allowing Ballerini to excavate her emotions while deepening the sisterly bond with her collaborators. While sipping mimosas and lounging outside in the Bahamas, a scribbled note in Ballerini’s notebook blossomed into ‘We Broke Up’, a twist on the kind of breakup song that helped define her career. This time, there’s no heartbreak or lingering emotion – just a sense of revelling in the finality. It’s a self-aware departure from her past, a casual shedding of skin.
“Entering my thirties, making really hard choices, it’s all paid off and made me feel better in my skin and my body than I ever have”
“The older I get, the more I’m drawn to making sure that by this time next year, I’m not the same version that I am right now talking to you,” she says. “There’s always this want to evolve and become.”
She encapsulates this feeling in the penultimate track, ‘This Time, Last Year’, where she reflects on the profound changes that can occur in just 365 days. She sings: “This time, last year, right around the holidays / There were messes in my mind / I was learning all the hard ways.” Originally intended to be the album’s opener, the song evolved as the project developed. “As the picture was being made, I was like, this is a nice reflection,” she says. Despite its significance, the track nearly didn’t make the record for its earnest cry of “Baby, look at me now”. She shares, “I love hearing other women sing empowering songs about themselves, but it gave me the ick when I tried to do it. Putting the song on the record and having a line as simple as ‘Hey baby, look at me now’ is like, I’m proud of this growth, and I’m proud of who I am now. I’m proud to be in a space in my life where I can sing that and not give myself the ick.”
It’s followed by the outro ‘Did You Make It Home?’ – the original title of the project – which serves as a gentle benediction, a wish for listeners to reach a place of safety and understanding by the album’s conclusion. “I think the greatest, most simple way of saying you love someone is making sure that they got home safe,” she reflects. “I want people, when they listen to this record, to feel whatever they want to feel, but at the end of it, feel like they got to wherever they were going.”
However, Ballerini’s journey toward that feeling of safety and self-assurance hasn’t been as straightforward. She admits that the theme of control has been a recurring challenge in her life and songwriting. “My biggest topic in therapy right now is that I have such a control problem,” she reveals. A textbook Virgo, she acknowledges that while her need for control has served her well in her career, it has posed challenges in her personal relationships. “I’ve had to really learn how to do that – learning to meet people 50/50,” she explains. This balancing act of embracing chaos while learning to let go weaves its way throughout ‘Patterns’. In many ways, the album demonstrates her willingness to confront her flaws while relishing the freedom that comes with releasing the need to have everything figured out.
Perhaps that’s why, when asked about her current outlook on life, she leads with, “This is very subject to change…” There’s a quiet acceptance beneath those words, a recognition that growth isn’t always linear and that change is a steady current – guiding you someplace new, if you let it.
Kelsea Ballerini’s ‘Patterns’ is out now via Black River Entertainment