Kelsea Ballerini Is Breaking All the Patterns — with Resilience, Therapy and a 'Healthy' Love: 'I Fully Accept Myself Now'

Kelsea Ballerini is twirling around as her photo shoot draws to an end, her fringed gold skirt catching the light of the Brooklyn sun as she sings and dances along to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” by Shania Twain — an artist she’s looked up to her whole life.

Just the night before, Ballerini quoted the icon’s hit song at the Prudential Center in nearby Newark, cheekily saying, “Let’s go, girls!” to an audience of around 17,000 fans (mostly women, children and gay men) before launching into a set list packed with tear-jerking ballads and empowering anthems.

“It’s always been at the top of my bucket list to tour arenas,” says Ballerini, 31.

With her dream well underway (she’s played to sold-out crowds in Nashville, Los Angeles, Boston and more in 2025) and a coaching seat on The Voice (airing Mondays at 8 p.m. on NBC), Ballerini is achieving goals she’s had since she burst onto the scene more than a decade ago.

She’s the first to acknowledge she overcame plenty of lows along the way: mental health struggles, an inner saboteur that cut down her confidence, and a painful public divorce. But she’s put in the work — and Ballerini is eager to help others feel less alone, especially through her brutally honest music.

Healthier than ever after years of therapy — and with a new love, Outer Banks actor Chase Stokes, by her side — Ballerini is on top of the world, professionally and personally.

“I had to shed some skin and make some tough choices and know that although things would be difficult for moments, it would make things so much better in the long run,” says the country superstar and CoverGirl spokesperson, who’s nominated for entertainer of the year at the 2025 ACM Awards. “I think it’s running toward things that scare you and standing up for things you believe in and doing it all unabashedly. That’s really been the biggest change in my life, just going, ‘Rip the Band-Aid.’ That’s what I credit being happy and steady to.”

Ballerini began writing songs at age 12, when her parents, Ed and Carla, divorced. “It became truly the safest thing in my life,” she says of unpacking her family’s divide through music and lyrics. Three years later she and her mom moved from her native Knoxville, Tenn., to Nashville. Bolstered by her girl-next-door relatability, Ballerini scored a record deal by 19 and broke out with her No. 1 hit “Love Me Like You Mean It” in 2015.

Five albums, A-list cosigns and accolades have followed. As have comparisons to industry titans, thanks to her Shania Twain-like show-womanship and Taylor Swiftian penchant for soul-excavating storytelling. But Ballerini, who has refused to be boxed in by genre limitations, has charted her own singular career in Nashville and beyond. “I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee, and my first concert was Britney Spears,” says the singer-songwriter, a country girl who loves some pop-star sparkle, “and that’s my music in a nutshell.”

Ballerini experienced a creative reset after she filed for divorce from her singer-songwriter husband, Morgan Evans, 39, in 2022. The crumbling of their nearly five-year marriage inspired Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, the Grammy-nominated EP she released the following year.

“I was going through what my parents did, and I went back to writing songs simply because I had to,” Ballerini says of chronicling the “intense” period. “I was like, ‘I have to get it out of me.’ My intention putting it out was to show other sides of heartbreak — to have more narrative, especially for women, around life changes and divorce.”

Ballerini also found solace in therapy, which previously helped her cope with an eating disorder through her teen years, as well as PTSD from witnessing a school shooting that killed a classmate when she was 14. “It’s been a game changer,” she says of therapy. “There is still a stigma around talking about certain things, and the way that you take that stigma away is you create conversation.”

Ballerini confronted behaviors that haunted her for years, like people-pleasing tendencies and impulses to leave before getting left. That self-exploration inspired her latest album, Patterns. “I’m very aware of my flaws. I have a relationship with them, and I do the work to keep growing up and growing out of certain things,” she says, “but in the same breath, I fully accept and celebrate myself right now. I don’t think I’ve ever been truly able to before because I had to go through life. You have to learn yourself before you love yourself — and I had learning to do.”

Along the way Ballerini’s manager had some advice that struck a chord: Stop acting like you’re new here. “For so long I would have my shoulders tucked when I would be in the room with my peers,” she says. “Women have to learn to own our success and celebrate ourselves.” Especially in Nashville. According to a recent study, only about 8 percent of songs played on country radio in 2024 were by women, making her latest tour even more of a feat.

"Historically there’s not a lot of women in our genre that have made that jump to arenas,” she says. “I had to do it right because I couldn’t fail — not just for myself but because I want to contribute to the history of women in country music.”

Karen Fairchild, Ballerini’s friend from the country quartet Little Big Town, says she’s doing just that. “We really need Kelsea in country music. Women need someone to tell their stories, now more than ever. She’s that girl that says the hard things and shows them they can come out on the other side,” Fairchild says. “She’s deeply connected to what her fans are going through. That’s a gift, and it’s the reason why she’s selling out arenas.”

With so many bucket-list items achieved, Ballerini has goals today that are more personal. “I’ve shifted the last couple of years to be more balanced. I value that time,” she says of prioritizing her family, friends, dogs — and boyfriend Stokes, 32, whom she began dating in January 2023 after sliding into his Instagram DMs. Before their first date she sent him Welcome Mat to explain where her heart was: “I just said, ‘Hey, I’ve gone through this thing, and you’re going to ask about it. So here’s a good entry point.’ ”

Stokes has been supportive ever since. “I look at love really practically now, and somehow it’s my favorite version of it. I didn’t really have an example of what a solid relationship looked like in my developmental years. I learned the hard way,” says Ballerini, who hasn’t ruled out getting married again. “Now my version of love that I’ve found, it’s steady and it’s human, and we work on it. That, to me, honestly, is the sexiest thing, like, ‘Hey, you want to go to therapy? Let’s go to therapy.’ Being so down with your person to put in the work for each other and individually, it’s a very new kind of love for me.”

Conversation drifts to regrets. Ballerini, who has a delivery order of Chicken McNuggets waiting for her, insists she has none. Moreover, “I would not tell my younger self a damn thing, truly,” she says. “I think not knowing how my journey was going to play out the last 10 years is probably the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.”

Below, Ballerini reflects more on owning her accomplishments, bonding with artists who paved the way for her and how love has changed her life.

What does it mean to join The Voice as a coach?

[By joining The Voice], I’ve been able to truly find that validity in the work that I've gotten to do and the success that I've had. I knew that if I ever got to be in the seat on The Voice, it would really help me step into the fact that I have been around for 10 years and I have had ebbs and flows and hits and flops and literally everything in between. I've learned from that, and I would like to share that knowledge.

Your first headlining arena tour is winding down. What have you learned from this experience?

As an opener, and then even my first few headline tours, my biggest fear was talking on stage, to the point where I would literally get on my laptop and have the set list up and I would type out word-for-word exactly what I was going to say and when I was going to say it every night. This tour, I've done none of that, and it's just been so freeing. If I feel like talking, I'll talk for 10 minutes and read signs and get people's stories and stuff like that. And I don't have a certain way that I set up certain songs. It's just kind of like I follow the night and I follow what's impacting me in the moment. It's kept me really present for each show, and it also helps me remember each show. That's been the biggest shift, the freedom of not worrying about what I'm going to say on stage.

I will say there have been a lot more boyfriends and husbands that have come with their girlfriends and wives, and I've caught myself a couple times because I really, in every show I'm talking to the girls and the gays, but I really like to be inclusive and I feel like I have songs truly for everyone. Especially with “Cowboys Cry Too” in the set now, it's like, “Wait a second, Kelsea, you need to make sure that you're being open to everybody.” So I've had to catch myself a couple times making sure that the boyfriends and husbands that have been dragged there unwillingly by their girls also feel welcome, because they are.

Looking back, it seems like Rolling Up the Welcome Mat unlocked something in your songwriting again.

I fell in love with songwriting when my parents got divorced. But then it becomes your job, and you start to think about more than just writing songs about your life. You do think about, "Where is this going to fit? Is this going to move the needle? Is this going to check these boxes?" And it doesn't make it less honest, but you definitely make it with different intentions. With Welcome Mat … it was really, really pure again.

Women artists face a lot more criticism for being vulnerable about love in music than men do. How have you dealt with that?

I stopped comparing what I do to men a long time ago, especially in country. It's just not comparable. But being able to put out a record like Rolling Up the Welcome Mat — in the years before that, Carly [Pearce] put out 29, Kacey [Musgraves] put out Star-Crossed. It was not so taboo to be a woman talking about it. And I credit that to artists like those incredible women that are friends of mine that were brave enough to do it, so I felt brave enough to do it.

You’re such a candid songwriter. Whether it's divorce or your relationship with Chase, is there a line that you won’t cross in your music?

It's a line I haven't found yet. I don't mind being honest. I have nothing to hide, and when it comes to my real life, I'm learning boundaries. But when it comes to songwriting, if I ever close the door to being an open book, it's not my music anymore. So I don't ever really want to. I'm trying to separate putting the most amount of truth and vulnerability into the music, and then maybe keeping the rest for myself. I'll let you know when I figure it out. It's a tightrope. [Chase] has been nothing but supportive of that level of honesty. Being with another creative, we both understand each other’s process. I would never ask him to not take a role that he feels inspired by, and he would never ask me to round the edges of my songwriting. That’s one of the things I appreciate the most about him.

What do you look for in a partner now that you maybe hadn’t before?

I really always romanticized what a relationship, a healthy one, a steady one, looks like. There's a really interesting thing when you get into a certain season of your relationship where some of the glitter wears off and you're starting to get really comfortable and you're having more of the harder conversations. You become a mirror for each other. [Chase] helps me see the best things about myself and vice versa. We also show each other the things that we want to get better at. This is the first time I've ever been challenged in a relationship in this way. As soon as I feel something going differently than I thought it would, I will be like, “Got to go.” And it's not because I want to, it's because I'm so scared of getting hurt, so I'll leave before I get left. He challenged me quickly on that one, and thank God. Those are the kind of things that I have found in this relationship and this season of love that I had never really known before.

You’ve worked and become friends with some of the idols you grew up listening to, like Shania Twain. What has that meant to you?

I never want to act like I'm too cool to be in a room with someone that I'm actually freaking out about, even after I get to know people — Shania being one, Kenny [Chesney] being one. There's something about never losing touch with, "I grew up on your music. You made me want to do this." And then being able to switch gears also and do a song with someone like that and be able to have a texting relationship with someone like that and be able to go to advice and have wine with. I think one of the things that made my music work early on was the fact that women that came before me didn't just hold space for me, but they were loud about it for me. I'll never forget when Shania invited me to sing with her at Stagecoach. Taylor [Swift] tweeting about my first EP before “Love Me Like You Mean It” hit Top 40 changed my career. Trisha Yearwood has been someone for me that, even in quiet moments, in moments where it wasn't a big flashy thing, checked in on me.

Hillary [Scott] from Lady A really became a mentor for me early on when I couldn't afford a dress to an award show in Nashville. She let me come over and raid her closet, and she gave me a hand-me-down dress that she had worn. I felt so pretty because she took the time to dress me for this event, because she wanted me to feel seen, and she wanted me to feel good going into these moments. To have those people in your life that are your peers and the people that pave the way for you to be able to have those kind of touch points with — it's been one of the greatest gifts of my career.

As someone who’s seamlessly crossed genres yourself, I’m curious what you think about Chappell Roan’s new country song “The Giver.”

The world needed it. I am just such a fan of her artistry, and I love that music is in a space where we are hopefully encouraging artists to make music that inspires them. And if she wants to make a pop song, it inspires a million people. If she wants to make a country song, it inspires a million people. That's the testament of a true artist is being able to just go with what inspires you. I think I saw that it's going to country radio, and I will be calling in and requesting it. Actually, when that song came out, I texted my manager and I was like, “If she plays a country award show, can I please intro this performance?”

You mentioned onstage this tour that one of your toxic traits is that you still read comments online. Why subject yourself to that?

I got rid of Twitter a long time ago. That was helpful. Twitter kicked my ass, so Twitter's been gone for a long time. But I discovered Reddit. I went through a very toxic phase with that, but it was when my life was a bit chaotic. Then I was like, "We need to have some boundaries." So that's no longer; I really just keep up with TikTok and Instagram, and even that feels like too much, but I'm not sure how to not because I'm a people pleaser, and I like the feedback. I think my intention is because I like feedback and I like to edit set lists, or we're tweaking things on the tour because I'm seeing stuff on TikTok. But yeah, I'm a girl. I'm sensitive. I'm an artist. If I see a mean comment, it affects me. My therapist told me a while ago, "Kelsea, you need to care more about less." Although I still care about that feedback, I don't give it the gravity that I used to.

It seems like you’re in the best place of your life. Is that fair to say?

Oh God, yeah, for sure. Mentally, physically; career-wise, heart-wise — I feel steady.