"I gotta be honest, my life looks a lot different than I thought it looked even a couple years ago," Kelsea Ballerini says with a sense of disbelief.
While many people can relate to that sentiment amid the effects of the pandemic, the country singer has experienced lots of changes herself in the past couple of years — including a divorce, which she announced in August.
That's one of the many life happenings Ballerini documents on her fourth studio album, the aptly titled SUBJECT TO CHANGE. But as she declares in the thought-provoking title track, "I don't think about the chapters/ It's all about turning the page."
The 15-track LP covers the usual country suspects — love ("LOVE IS A COWBOY"), heartbreak ("I GUESS THEY CALL IT FALLIN'"), booze-filled nights ("YOU'RE DRUNK, GO HOME") — but with a level of maturity and growth that even Ballerini admits feels different. As she's detailed in her teasers for SUBJECT TO CHANGE, the album is as literal as the title itself, and it all goes back to one thing: growth.
"I keep calling it my first grown-up record," Ballerini, who turned 29 on Sept. 12, says with a laugh. "Every record I've made, I've just been in such a different headspace, because they kind of mark two years of my 20s. And every two years in your 20s, I feel like you're just a whole different person."
To commemorate the release of SUBJECT TO CHANGE, Ballerini picked three songs from each of her four albums that she felt best displayed her personal and professional journey. Below, Ballerini details why she picked each song, what they mean to her, and how they all led to her most personal album to date.
"Secondhand Smoke," The First Time
I started writing songs when I was 12. When my parents got divorced, it was in that moment, and through that process, that I realized that music was my tool to heal. It's the way I process life and the way I get my emotions out.
"Secondhand Smoke" is the only song I've ever written about my parents divorce. And it, to me, was such a marker of honoring the pain that brought the gift. It was really important for me to put that on my first record to time-mark that — to just say, "This is the thing that is even the reason I'm making this record."
"Love Me Like You Mean It," The First Time
I had signed my publishing deal. I was doing two or three writing sessions a day, trying to figure out my thing and what was gonna make me an artist — like, what was gonna make people listen.
To this day —and I have an awful memory — I remember sitting in the lobby of Black River [Entertainment, her label] with ["Love Me" co-writers] Forest [Whitehead], Lance [Carpenter] and Josh [Kerr], we had just ordered pizza, and we were talking about the music we loved. And Forest brought up "Take A Bow" by Rihanna. He was like, "I just want to hear you do something with this kind of attitude." And the song just like, happened. I remember it feeling like something I hadn't written yet, and something that I hadn't really heard anyone else do yet.
Obviously it was the first single, but it holds a lot of weight for me personally because it was my first experience as an artist in general. That song represents the first of this whole journey.
"The First Time," The First Time
That song represents my songwriting, which is, and I've said it a million times, my favorite and the most pure part of what I do. I unintentionally wrote one song by myself.
When I decided to put that on the album, I made a promise to myself that no matter how many albums I get the pleasure of making in my career, I'm always gonna do one solo write [on] each record. I never want to lose the trust that I have for myself and my songwriting. That song represents that to me.
"Miss Me More," Unapologetically
I had the hook, "I thought I'd miss you, but I missed me more" in my phone for a long time. And I didn't want to write it in Nashville, just because of who it was about. I also didn't let myself write outside of Nashville for a long time, because I was really protective of not sonically pushing the boundary to pop, ever.
Then finally, I went to LA., and I had one session with David Hodges and another artist/writer named Leland. I finally just felt safe enough, I guess, to unload, so I did. [Laughs]
It's also the first time that I let myself get a little bit savage. I was so nervous about being the girl that's happy-go-lucky [after releasing] "Yeah Boy" and "Dibs and "Love Me Like You Mean It," and then finally getting a little harsher. But it honored the feelings that I had at that time.
It represents me starting to take ownership of all of my feelings — not just the flirty, youthful ones, but the more confident ones. That song just took me on a ride. Best kind of revenge.
"Unapologetically," Unapologetically
"Unapologetically" represents this really naive, but dead-set will to just follow my gut and follow my heart.
My current single out at country radio ["HEARTFIRST"] is the same sentiment. I keep going back to it in different forms and in different songs, because I really believe in my heart that nothing good in life happens unless you just trust yourself. You never know where it's gonna lead, and that's part of the risk, but it usually leads somewhere really beautiful — at least for a while.
"Legends," Unapologetically
"Legends," at the time — and maybe still — is the only song that I wrote about one thing, and by time I recorded it and it came out, meant a totally different thing.
I wrote it to process this period of my life that I spent with the person that I was trying to reflect on fondly. By the time it came out, I named the fan club Legends, and then all of the people that have been on the journey since "Love Me Like You Mean It" started calling themselves Legends.
We used to scream, "We didn't do it for the fame of the glory/ We just did it for you and me" — like, we just unspokenly started screaming it together at shows. It became this real connection between me and the people that relate to my music.
I love it so much more now, because it represents the connection that I get to have with people, which is why I do [this]. It has been a metamorphosis of a song for me.
"the way i used to," kelsea
"the way i used to" is by far the most pop song I've ever put on a record. I was in the car with my friend Steph Jones — who's an incredible songwriter — and we were playing each other demos. She was like, "I just wrote this sick hook at a camp, but I don't have the song, it's just the hook." She played it for me, and I was like, "I don't know anything other than this feels like the most clever hook I've ever heard, and for some reason it feels like I need it."
It's the first song ever [that] I didn't write nuts to bolts. It's the first song where I took the hook and I wrote the rest. I just really believed in it.
"a country song," kelsea
"a country song" — that somehow lives on the same record [as "The Way I Used To"] — is truly digging my heels into country music and saying, "This is the place that I feel watered." I love the juxtaposition of both of those living on the same body of music.
"la," kelsea
"la" is literally me talking through not knowing how to be a semi-public figure. I mess it up often, but I'm doing my best. It talks about trying to honor country music and everything that I do, while also honoring my will to push boundaries and expand myself and my art. It also honors growing pains.
Having all three of those on the same record, nothing could have been more true to the musical place I was in. I was finally confident enough to play. I just played on that album. It was so collaborative, so full of friendship. And it's like a quilt — it's not a very cohesive record, and that's just where I was at.
"SUBJECT TO CHANGE," SUBJECT TO CHANGE
I had the [album] title before I had the song. I went in and I was like, "Okay, there's two ways we can write this. We can either be super broad, like, 'Everyone's experienced change in the last few years. This is a universal feeling.'" Or we can be so specific where it's like, almost jarring. And that's the route that I went.
I dyed my hair brown for like two seconds, and in the two seconds is when I wrote "SUBJECT TO CHANGE." So it literally says in the chorus, "I haven't decided if I'm gonna stay brunette," and I didn't. That is the irony of the whole entire record in one silly little line.
The whole record starts with "Seasons do it and it happens when the night goes day/ Going through it, I knew it, the right and the hard thing are sometimes the same." And then the second verse is, "If I'm honest, growing up, it kind of hurts like hell/ It's chaotic, ironic, but it's how I learned to find myself."
I think it sets the tone of truly where I'm at right now in my life, but also just finding a lot of peace in the fact that the point of life is change. The point of life is growth. The point of life is moments where you just go "What is going on?," and then you find out what's going on, and you're better because of it. That song is the perfect tone-setter for the record, but it's also just a true snapshot of me as a 29-year-old right now.
"DOIN' MY BEST," SUBJECT TO CHANGE
There's a lot I could say about this song, so I'll word vomit because I think this song deserves it.
We had cut the first 10 songs for the album, and I was listening to it when I was on vacation in Mexico a while ago. I was realizing that some of the pillar songs, like the ones I was really excited about, I was almost playing a character in them, like "MUSCLE MEMORY" and "YOU'RE DRUNK GO HOME."
I was like, "These are so rad and I'm so excited to play them live, but it's not necessarily where I'm at in my life right now." And I really want to honor the part of me that I unlocked when I wrote my book [of poems, Feel Your Way Through, published in 2021]. I unlocked this part of me that was really fearless with honesty, and I wanted to make sure that I had at least one song where it was like, brutally honest — and honestly, just an extension of the book.
I asked my friend Alysa Vanderheym — who I wrote eight of the songs with on this album — to send me a track. She sent me a track, and I went down to the ocean. I put on my earbuds, and I opened my Voice Notes app, and I just stream-of-consciousness sang the song. That's why the rhymes aren't perfect and some of the words are weird.
It's really taking ownership of my life and things that might have looked a little embarrassing or a little cringy, and just fully taking ownership of those things.
The other thing that I'll say about this song is, every year I pick a word, like on New Year's, and it's my word for the year. This year, I remember I spent hours on New Year's Eve writing all the things that I wanted to get better at, and all the things that I wanted to grow in. I read it the next day, and all I got from it was, "You're not good enough now, and that's actual bulls—."
So I [tore] it up, and I just wrote, "I'm doing my best." And I put it in an Instagram caption too. I said, "That's my vibe for the year. I'm just going to show up as I am as someone who's actively trying to grow, but knowing that as I am now is enough."
You hear that thematically on SUBJECT TO CHANGE — in "LITTLE THINGS," in "WHAT I HAVE," there's a lot of peace in it. Peace amongst chaos. It's been the theme of my year, it's been my biggest intention this year, and it's the song that really just takes ownership.
"WHAT I HAVE," SUBJECT TO CHANGE
I love starting the record with "SUBJECT TO CHANGE," which says, "Life is chaos. Life is ups and downs. We find ourselves somewhere in the middle of all those ups and downs. I acknowledge that everything I have now I might not have tomorrow. Life is subject to change."
Then the record takes you through the journey. And at the end it says, "And although it might not be what I have tomorrow, right now what I have is meant for me. And it's not in the big things, it's in the little things. And I'm taking inventory of my life as it is now, before it changes."