Our podcast, Five Things with Lynn Hirschberg, is back. Kicking off the third season of the series in which stars sit down with W’s Editor at Large to discuss the five things that have made them who they are is country music sensation Kelsea Ballerini. During their candid conversation, Ballerini opens up about the end of her nine-year marriage to fellow country star Morgan Evans, her emotionally raw new EP, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, and the “pure joy” of standing up against Tennessee’s drag ban with her performance at the 2023 CMT Music Awards.
Listen to the full episode below:
In this episode, Ballerini covers everything from her first concert (Britney Spears) growing up on a farm in East Tennessee, to her mother’s brave decision to move them to Nashville to support her musical ambitions when she was just 15 years old: “It was her watching [music] go from a hobby to a passion and watching me just become truly obsessed.”
When she was 12, Ballerini’s parents got divorced, and that’s when she discovered songwriting as both a craft and a means of self-therapy. It’s the core of what she’s returned to with her latest EP, the highly-personal Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. The project was written during the 2022 dissolution of Ballerini’s marriage.
“It took me so long to even get to the point where [divorce] was something that I entertained. Just because of my parents and watching that happen, I was terrified. I was really, really scared to do that,” Ballerini explains.
“Sometimes [a breakup] is the fault of two, and sometimes it's really intricate, and sometimes it's just time and it doesn't work out. This EP touches on that kind of a breakup, which you don't really hear a lot of songs about, but I guess it's very common.”
Ballerini and Hirschberg also discuss the unique songwriting culture of Nashville, successful crossover country stars, and Ballerini grappling with a shooting that happened at her high school. They wrap up talking about Ballerini’s CMT Music Awards performance in April, where the singer brought out four former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants at a moment when Tennessee was facing a state-wide ban against public drag shows. (The law was struck down as unconstitutional on June 2, 2023.)
“I'm happy because I'm standing up for myself and the things that I believe to be right. That’s a legacy that I choose to leave now. That was four minutes of pure joy, and then about four weeks of get off Instagram. Terrifying.”
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