Current:Home > StocksKelsea Ballerini announces new album, ‘Patterns.’ It isn’t what you’d expect: ‘I’m team no rules’ -Zenith Investment School
Kelsea Ballerini announces new album, ‘Patterns.’ It isn’t what you’d expect: ‘I’m team no rules’
View
Date:2025-04-15 04:45:19
NEW YORK (AP) — Kelsea Ballerini is beaming. It’s not a nervous smile, though she admits to feeling scared. She’s been hard at work at her fifth full-length album, “Patterns,” and on Oct. 25 the world is finally going to hear it — hear her, in a collection of songs she describes as an “accurate snapshot” of her life. And lately, people have been curious. The story they’re going to get, she assures, is not the one they’re anticipating.
“I think that people probably expect this really happy-go-lucky, love, mushy, gushy record from me. That’s not the case,” she tells The Associated Press. “And I’m really proud of that. It would have been easy to, I think, just collect the really beautiful parts of my life that I’ve dusted off and found the last couple of years. But that’s not the fullness of my experience.”
She’s referring, in some ways, to 2023’s super-successful “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” an EP and short film that told the story of the dissolution of a marriage, a not too-thinly-veiled reference to her own life, where, in 2022, Ballerini found herself divorced from Australian country singer Morgan Evans. These days, she’s partnered with “Outer Banks” star Chase Stokes, a relationship the public has fallen in love with. But her love life is not the sole heart of “Patterns.”
“There’s a lot of narrative of learning how to go from fighting with something or with someone, to fighting for something or for someone. And there’s a lot of that journey for the whole record,” she says.
Unlike “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” which she describes as a reflective release, “Patterns” is active and in the moment. “The heartbeat” of the album is about “analyzing yourself and the people that you love the most in order to grow.”
That comes across in the previously released track “Cowboys Cry Too,” featuring Noah Kahan — the only collaboration on the album and an empathic look at toxic masculinity from a female perspective — and the new single “Sorry Mom,” out Friday. It is a swaying, guitar-pop confessional with intergenerational appeal, and it will no doubt strike a chord.
“It’s an intimate song,” she says. “The first line is, ‘Sorry, mom, I smelled like cigarettes.’ You know, it’s the things that your mom doesn’t really want to hear. But then you get to the chorus and the meat of it and the heart of it, and it’s a letter of thanks to my mom for raising me the way she did.”
“Sorry Mom” is one of many love songs on the album: Like “Cowboys,” which was written for the men in her life, or a lush song of self-preservation and celebration called “First Rodeo,” that’s romantic in theme. These are the kind of songs that can be realized in a safe writing and recording environment.
Ballerini performs during CMA Fest in Nashville, Tenn., on June 7, 2024. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)
To make “Patterns,” Ballerini enlisted an all-woman team. She co-produced and co-wrote the album with Alysa Vanderheym, and also worked with songwriters Jessie Jo Dillon, Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild and Hillary Lindsey. “I’ve never felt so safe making an album before, top to bottom. There was more pressure on this record just because of all the ears and eyeballs that ‘Welcome Mat’ got,” Ballerini says. “And so, I wanted to safely make this one where I didn’t feel the pressure from the inside.”
They went on writing retreats together, and the process “produced something that felt streamlined without feeling too monotonous, and something that naturally has a lot of warmth and empathy and heart,” she says. “Because that’s what we do as women.”
That level of comfortability allowed for exciting experimentation as well. Ballerini is a country musician, through-and-through, but she has is unafraid to take genre-bending risks, particularly on this album. “To me, what makes me undoubtedly country is my storytelling and my songwriting. And that will never waver or change. But, per usual, I didn’t overthink whether there was a banjo or a beat drop. And there are both on this record, as there have been on my other ones,” she says. “I think lyrically and content wise, I really just was team no rules. Nothing’s off limits.”
There are lighter songs here, and darker ones, self-discovery and insecurity, as well as different geographies. New York and South Carolina are characters, Ballerini exploring her “hair down human me and the more dressed up, nervous, outward facing me,” she says.
“It’s my job to make a record that has something for everyone. But that comes from making a record that’s true to me, and that’s what I did,” she concludes. “And so, I just hope people feel something,” while listening. “Whatever it is.”
veryGood! (754)
Related
- From family road trips to travel woes: Americans are navigating skyrocketing holiday costs
- Clean Economy Jobs Grow in Most Major U.S. Cities, Study Reveals
- Meet the self-proclaimed dummy who became a DIY home improvement star on social media
- Deadly tornado rips through North Texas town, leaves utter devastation
- Working Well: When holidays present rude customers, taking breaks and the high road preserve peace
- This $35 2-Piece Set From Amazon Will Become a Staple in Your Wardrobe
- All the Dazzling Details Behind Beyoncé's Sun-Washed Blonde Look for Her Renaissance Tour
- Global Shipping Inches Forward on Heavy Fuel Oil Ban in Arctic
- The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test
- Lawsuits Seeking Damages for Climate Change Face Critical Legal Challenges
Ranking
- The city of Chicago is ordered to pay nearly $80M for a police chase that killed a 10
- Video shows man struck by lightning in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, then saved by police officer
- Montana man sentenced to 18 years for shooting intended to clean town of LGBTQ+ residents
- Humanity Faces a Biodiversity Crisis. Climate Change Makes It Worse.
- McKinsey to pay $650 million after advising opioid maker on how to 'turbocharge' sales
- Actor Bruce Willis has frontotemporal dementia. Here's what to know about the disease
- Why 'lost their battle' with serious illness is the wrong thing to say
- Global Warming Is Pushing Arctic Toward ‘Unprecedented State,’ Research Shows
Recommendation
Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie return for an 'Encore,' reminisce about 'The Simple Life'
Parents Become Activists in the Fight over South Portland’s Petroleum Tanks
This Racism Is Killing Me Inside
Why Corkcicle Tumblers, To-Go Mugs, Wine Chillers & More Are Your BFF All Day
Sam Taylor
Wildfire smoke blankets upper Midwest, forecast to head east
86-year-old returns George Orwell's 1984 to library 65 years late, saying it needs to be read more than ever
Insurance-like Product Protects Power Developers from Windless Days