Country singer-songwriter Kelsea Ballerini is an open book with her fans.
So how does she deal with social anxiety?
And how has her songwriting evolved?
Keep watching to find out!
Ballerini has been open about suffering from an eating disorder as an early teen until
age 18 — battling bulimia and developing unhealthy habits like working out excessively
and taking diet pills.
She had also passed out several times until she finally asked for help.
She told People magazine in 2021,
"My parents had just gotten divorced, and I think for me, it was a source of control."
While she no longer deals with an eating disorder, there have been moments in her career where
her body-image issues have resurfaced.
After a performance on the Today show in 2015, Ballerini read an article alleging she was
pregnant because of her belly.
She admitted,
"I reverted back to that 12-year-old version of me."
She overcame those insecurities — and she's been open with fans about her struggles.
In July 2020, she shared on Instagram a photo of her in workout clothes.
In the caption, she spoke about body image and how the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll
on hers.
She wrote,
"If you've been silently insecure about the way your body has handled this year, you're
not alone and I'm sending you a big hug."
Songwriting was a source of comfort for Ballerini during her parents' divorce — and the song
"Secondhand Smoke" off her debut album, "The First Time," was inspired by that time in
her life.
In 2015, she told Rolling Stone,
"I haven't been able to sing it live yet, because I sob every time.
It's so many people's story, and a story that needs to be told because I know when I was
12 and 13 when [the divorce] was happening, I felt super alone."
Ballerini claimed that when she started songwriting as a teen, she mostly wrote about cute boys.
And as she matured, her songwriting did as well.
She confessed to CBS News in 2016 that she wouldn't be an artist if not for songwriting,
and said,
"I grew up singing and I always loved it, but it was never anything that I thought,
'oh I'm going to be a singer when I grow up.'
When I started writing I felt like whatever it was that I was going through and writing
about was probably what other people were going through too."
"I never thought I'd be a singer songwriter."
Ballerini had an epiphany during a Kelly Clarkson concert back in the day — that's when she
officially decided she was going to move to Nashville.
As a teen, Ballerini attended a show on Clarkson's "Behind These Hazel Eyes" tour.
In an interview with BuzzFeed, Ballerini said any doubt she had about moving to Nashville
washed away when Clarkson seemed to wink at her through the concert's massive video screens.
She told the outlet,
"It was right when I thought I was gonna move to Nashville and be a singer, so I was super
into it, and I remember I was watching her sing one of these songs and I was having a
moment of like, that's exactly what I'm gonna do with my life, this is it."
When Clarkson winked, Ballerini took it as a sign.
Later in her music career, Ballerini met Clarkson and even temporarily took her place on "The
Voice."
She tweeted before appearing on the show,
"When [Kelly Clarkson] calls and asks you to keep her seat warm, you put all those years
of being her super fan to work."
After Ballerini landed a record deal at age 19 when she was a sophomore at Lipscomb University
in Nashville, she sang goodbye to school.
Ballerini was a communications and marketing student, and while school was important, music
was even more so.
The country singer told the Chicago Tribune in a 2016 interview that while she took classes,
she worked diligently towards landing a gig in the Nashville music industry.
She explained,
"It took a long time for people to actually listen to me and actually take me seriously.
But I learned that if I walked into meetings and could sit down and actually communicate
my dreams and my vision, [...] if I took myself seriously, then other people would, too."
Ballerini eventually signed a publishing deal, and then a record contract, with the indie
music label Black River.
The singer told CMT she only enrolled in college as a promise to her mom — she'd go to school
until she landed a deal.
Her mom held her end of the bargain, and so did Ballerini, who went on to pursue music
full time.
Ballerini is a crossover artist in her own right with pop hits like "The Other Girl"
with pop star Halsey, but she'll always look up to another crossover icon: Taylor Swift.
In an interview with Buzzfeed in 2018, Ballerini said she's looked up to the superstar since
well before she made herself a name in Nashville.
She explained,
"I mean her whole first album, she was like the only young female singer-songwriter in Nashville.
And so she was kinda the one that me and I think a lot of the new girls in country music
looked up to, and we were like, 'She's doing it!
So we can too.'"
She also told the outlet that she received some of the best advice from Swift when she
first started in the industry — to be herself.
In an interview with WWD, the singer said Swift was another reason she made the move
to Nashville, away from her Knoxville hometown, to pursue a music career.
She told the outlet,
"Until I saw a girl named Taylor move to Nashville, I didn't know that I could do that."
At 25, Ballerini was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, according to the Tennessean.
In 2019, country music star and fellow Opry member Carrie Underwood did the honors, introducing
Ballerini as a member onstage in front of a live audience after Ballerini graced the
stage with her chart-topping hits like "Peter Pan."
Before welcoming her into the Opry family, Underwood told Ballerini,
"The Opry has been and always will be here, the heart and soul of country music."
It was a full-circle moment for Ballerini, who wound up backstage with Underwood before
her debut Opry performance in 2015.
Ballerini told the outlet that moment was, quote, "the coolest thing that had ever happened
to [her] at that point."
Country band Little Big Town invited her to join the Opry a month prior to her 2019 induction
following a joint performance on the Opry stage.
Shortly after, an emotional Ballerini made it clear how much the invite meant to her.
Ballerini may wear many hats — she's a singer, songwriter, social media influencer, and published
author — but the country music star is the first to confess she's not so confident about
the dancing aspect of her line of work.
In an interview with CMT in 2020, Ballerini shared her hesitancy with the dance routine
for her "Hole in the Bottle" music video.
She admitted,
"I was a little nervous about dancing, I'm not going to lie, but by that point I felt
so comfortable with Hannah [the director] and the incredible dancers, Lauren and Madison,
that we all just hyped each other up and went for it."
While dancing doesn't come naturally to the singer, she clearly enjoys the pastime at
home while getting ready for the day.
She shared a video post on Instagram in 2021 of her morning routine, which involved a little
impromptu dancing.
Ballerini added 'published author' to her resume when she released "Feel Your Way Through:
A Book of Poetry" in 2021.
The Nashville singer-songwriter told Euphoria in 2021 that she was inspired to write the
book in 2020 when the world shut down amid COVID-19, and she divided it into sections
with topics personal to her, everything from body image and sexuality to family.
The singer had just released her new album, "kelsea," and was in the process of planning
her headlining tour, but those plans fell by the wayside.
So she turned her direction to writing poems instead of songwriting, and produced a book
of poetry in less than a year.
She told the mag,
"I love making music and I'll make records as long as people want to hear music from
me, but I have this peace knowing that when the radio stops playing me one day, I'll still
get to write."
When the Tennessean asked if she'd ever turn her poems into songs, she told the outlet,
"Maybe.
[...] I think because I have all this new space in me — that I discovered — I think
there will be a lot of music that comes from that."
Ballerini lived out her teenage dream when she went on tour with the Jonas Brothers in 2021.
To say she was excited is an understatement.
In August of that year, the singer-songwriter shared with fans on TikTok a video featuring
a throwback clip of a teen Ballerini explaining why she loves the pop trio.
"This time I'm gonna talk about five reasons why I love the Jonas Brothers."
Back in 2008, she had sent the video to a contest in hopes of meeting the Jonas Brothers.
While she didn't win, she won in a big way over a decade later when she agreed to open
for the band.
In the same video shared on TikTok, Ballerini added a clip of her accepting the trio's invitation
to open for them on tour via FaceTime.
"Do you want to come and play this place with us and like the rest of the country this summer?"
"I think it sounds like a really good idea."
Ballerini hit the road with the trio in August of 2021, with their first performance being
in Las Vegas, and she documented her journey on social media.
In one Instagram post, Ballerini shared a photo of her and the band and wrote:
"Only took 12 years to win the JoBro meet & greet."
Ballerini may be a bonafide star, but she's got insecurities just like everyone else.
In an interview with People magazine in 2020, the singer-songwriter spoke about her album
"kelsea," which was released in March of that year.
The album was personal for Ballerini, who wrote and sang about many of her struggles,
including social anxiety, prevalent in the song "LA," which she wrote while in the city
of stars.
She told the mag,
"Part of it is I don't know where I fit in the celebrity culture because [I think] I'm
a D-list country singer and I find myself in a room with A-list people and I don't know
how to navigate it or how to talk to them."
She went more into detail about the inspiration for "LA" in an interview with the Washington
Post in 2020.
She recalled that during a rare night off in L.A., she called a couple of her famous
friends — like Taylor Swift.
No one answered.
She admitted,
"I went into this spiral of like, 'Oh my God, why did I think I was cool enough to call
Taylor Swift?
That was so embarrassing, of course she didn't pick up."
In her moments of anxiety, Ballerini said songwriting has been like therapy.
Ballerini lives in the Nashville suburbs with her Australian country music artist hubby,
Morgan Evans, and their dog, Dibs.
Ballerini has spoken about their home on multiple occasions with different outlets.
She told ET in 2021 that they purchased and moved into the house in 2020 after having
lived in a downtown condo since they got married in 2017.
She shared,
"Having the condo, we loved it.
It was nice to be able to walk to dinner or whatever, but yeah, I just felt like with
everything that's happened this last year, it was time to get a little piece of land."
The singer-songwriter loves sharing glimpses of her personal life with fans, and as a result,
glimpses of her home life.
At the end of 2020, she posted a photo on Instagram of her surrounded by moving boxes,
and in March of 2022, she posted another photo of her and Dibs hanging out in bed.
Talking to People mag in 2020, Ballerini shared one of her home's must-have items — wallpaper.
She admitted,
"I like a lot going on.
I'm not a big minimalist person in a house."
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