While a guest on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Kelsea Ballerini has opened up about attending her high school reunion in Knoxville, Tennessee. Ballerini recently performed the highly-successful duet “Half of My Hometown,” which contains lyrics discussing the singer’s complicated relationship with Knoxville.
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While speaking to Clarkson about the event, Ballerini said, “This was the high school that I left after my sophomore year to move to Nashville to do [music]. So I didn’t graduate from here. So I was kind of like an honorary Bobcat. But my best friend graduated from there, and I went with her.”
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Despite not graduating from the school, Ballerini said it was a blast from the past to see her former classmates again. “It was so interesting, because we walked in the room and people were having dinner, and it was the same people at the tables.” She also disclosed that she had a dance party with the other attendees of the reunion, but the “Miss Me More” singer added that she didn’t participate until “after we drank.”
All jokes aside, Ballerini seemed to really enjoy her time at the reunion. She told Clarkson, “It was really beautiful. It was actually the 11-year reunion. It was just really cool to see everyone, and everyone’s in a different phase of life, but you know, we’re all just growing up. It was a really cool — it was really, I don’t know, heartfelt.”
Ballerini just released a new EP titled Rolling Up the Welcome Mat on February 14, which details her divorce from fellow country music star Morgan Evans. In addition to the EP, Ballerini released a companion short film of the same name.
While a guest on the podcast Got It From My Momma, Ballerini’s mother, Carla Denham, spoke about how she would react when her daughter would send her songs off her emotional new EP. Denham said, “I mean, I would just bawl.
And the songs were hard enough to listen to — but I also know that’s cathartic for her; that’s her way of processing hurt and pain,” Denham continues. “When she decided to do the mini-film … she wrote the script for it, so she was sharing all that with me, and I’m thinking, ‘God, how are you gonna do that? I couldn’t do that. There’s no way I could get up there.'”
(Photo Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for CMT)
