Kelsea Ballerini is relatively new to the country music industry compared to artists like Carrie Underwood, but these past 5 years she’s made her mark. I started listening to her a few years ago and I’ve fallen in love with her music, especially her new album, Kelsea, which came out in March 2020. So, how’s she changing the country music industry?
For starters, her songwriting isn’t just great, she keeps it real. Her album Unapologetically says it best; she won’t apologize for telling it how it is. Miss Me More, one of her biggest hits, is all about ditching that toxic guy and realizing you don’t miss him, you miss who you were before him and homecoming queen? talks about how even the homecoming queen, who seems like she has it all, doesn’t have that perfect life. In a CMT Crossroads episode with Ballerini and Halsey, Halsey says if there was any song she wished she wrote it would be homecoming queen?, which is pretty cool; the song reached people outside of country music. Some have criticized Ballerini for being in the country category and putting out pop sounding tracks, but she’ll clap back by saying that while some of her music is a mix of both, she’ll always be a country artist. People may see it as a negative when an artist jumps from one genre to another, but it’s a positive that her music is so good it appeals to the pop world as well as the country; great music is great, it doesn’t have to be squeezed into a genre box.
Ballerini’s also changing the country music industry because she’s innovative. After releasing an album the week America started shutting down because of Coronavirus, she kept working and released a new album months later, a stripped down version of Kelsea, appropriately titled Ballerini. Talk about being creative and making the best of being at home; did I also mention that Ballerini co-writes almost all of her songs? She has that love for music and can story tell so well—you can’t not be interested in what she has to say.
Ballerini’s also been tearing up the charts; Love Me Like You Mean It was the first debut No. 1 single from a female country artist since Carrie Underwood’s Jesus, Take the Wheel was released nine years earlier. Ballerini hit the ground running and broke into the country music industry as someone who people wanted to listen to; before headlining her own tours, she opened for Lady Antebellum, Dan+Shay, Rascal Flatts, Thomas Rhett, Keith Urban, and Kelly Clarkson. She’s shared the stage with the biggest names in country music and from the start, I think everyone knew there was something special about her.
Kelsea Ballerini is one of the biggest female artists in country music right now and she’s making her impact on the industry. If you need a few new songs to listen to, I would definitely check her out; some of my favorites are Legends, half of my hometown, Peter Pan, This Feeling, and Miss Me More.