{"id":249035,"date":"2020-03-19T02:38:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T06:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=249035"},"modified":"2020-03-19T02:38:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T06:38:50","slug":"kelsea-ballerini-goes-on-a-first-name-basis-on-third-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/03\/19\/kelsea-ballerini-goes-on-a-first-name-basis-on-third-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelsea Ballerini goes on a ‘first name basis’ on third album"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
\u201cI am loud and I talk too much,\u201d\u00a0Ballerini, 26, admits. \u201cAnd it’s really because I am scared of the silence. I am scared of the alone time now. I am aware of that.\u201d (File photo<\/a>: kelseaballerini\/Instagram<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASHVILLE \u2014\u00a0Kelsea\u00a0Ballerini\u00a0is an oversharer, both on social media and in songs, and those inner conversations, anxieties and obsessions show a country star navigating fame and pop music on her third album \u201ckelsea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am loud and I talk too much,\u201d\u00a0Ballerini, 26, admits. \u201cAnd it’s really because I am scared of the silence. I am scared of the alone time now. I am aware of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She starts the highly personal record, out on Friday, with the song \u201covershare,\u201d relating the time she got drunk and weepy in front of strangers and the other time she embarrassed herself in front of a celebrity (and no, she won’t name names.)<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Ballerini’s portrait of a young star straddling country and pop isn’t just an Instagram feed of famous friends and exotic locales. She’s cataloging insecurities that are just as relatable to the average person.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it’s the album that is super self-aware and super open in a different way than I’ve been before,\u201d said the Knoxville, Tennessee-native who is nominated for female artist of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, which was pushed back to the fall because of the coronavirus. \u201cIt’s the album that I keep saying puts me on a first-name basis with everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to again co-writing every song on the album, she took on additional duties as a co-producer with Ross Copperman, Shane McAnally and Jimmy Robbins.<\/p>\n

\u201cKelsea\u00a0knows what she wants every track to sound like and she knows how she wants her vocal to sound, and what guitar parts she wants in there, down to the finest details,\u201d said Copperman, who also co-wrote several of the songs.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0Ballerini\u00a0is one of the few female artists to consistently get No. 1 country radio hits, she knows that many people still consider her a country pop artist. For this record, she leaned into that more heavily than before, co-writing with Ed Sheeran, Julia Michaels, Halsey and Tayla Parx, a co-writer of Ariana Grande’s hits \u201cThank U, Next\u201d and \u201c7 Rings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Halsey and\u00a0Ballerini’s fast friendship formed over rounds of late-night karaoke in a Nashville dive bar, and when\u00a0Ballerini\u00a0decided to write a dark sounding duet, she thought of the \u201cBad at Love\u201d pop star.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like `I’m going to write a chick duet and I am going to try to get Halsey on it,\u201d’\u00a0Ballerini\u00a0said. \u201cBold! Who do I think I am?\u201d<\/p>\n

The two singers co-wrote the club-ready \u201cthe other girl\u201d about the suspicious feeling women get about a cheating partner.<\/p>\n

Ballerini\u00a0also couldn’t pass up an opportunity to write with Sheeran, either, even when it meant taking a red-eye flight from L.A. to Nashville to meet up with him. Copperman was in a writing session with Sheeran, who had mentioned his desire to write country songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was telling me that he wanted to have a No. 1 country song, and I was like, \u201cLet me help you make that happen,\u201d’ Copperman said.<\/p>\n

Ballerini, Sheeran and Copperman wrote about three songs in about three hours, including \u201clove and hate,\u201d a piano and string ballad that made the record.<\/p>\n

But even as\u00a0Ballerini\u00a0eases into the pop world, she also has her feet planted in country music, duetting with fellow Knoxville-native Kenny Chesney on the nostalgic \u201chalf of my hometown,\u201d and her first real drinking song, the twangy \u201chole in the bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n

She ends the album with \u201cla,\u201d a song she wrote by herself, about her need to stay grounded amid the shiny lights of red carpets and parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole thing is me trying to be self-aware,\u201d said\u00a0Ballerini.\u00a0\u201dIt’s a lot of self-discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASHVILLE \u2014\u00a0Kelsea\u00a0Ballerini\u00a0is an oversharer, both on social media and in songs, and those inner conversations, anxieties and obsessions show a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":249036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249037,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249035\/revisions\/249037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}