The 29-year-old Tennessee-born country singer Kelsea Ballerini is one of the fastest-rising names in the industry.
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She released her debut LP, The First Time, in 2014 and her follow-up, Unapologetically, three years later. Just last year, Ballerini released her latest album, Subject to Change. In 2021 and 2022, Ballerini hosted the CMT Music Awards, most recently with Kane Brown.
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Ballerini, who hosted Saturday Night Live in March, is one of the most intriguing country stars of the moment, with her ability to crossover to the even more mainstream pop genre. And with all this to her name, one might wonder what the artist, host, and burgeoning star might have to say about the world at large outside of her songwriting.
What does she have to say about her craft, love, and life? Here are the 20 best Kelsea Ballerini quotes.
1. “I’m basically always writing. Why wouldn’t I? I love it.”
2. “I love pop music. I listen to it; I think you can hear it in my songwriting and my album. I’d definitely say it’s country-pop music, but it’s country first.”
3. “I’ve always been a big, bold thinker and a dreamer.”
4. “I love having that conversation with someone I’ve never met before who’s enjoying something that I wrote and being able to connect and share that.”
5. “I like making people feel pretty.”
6. “In my opinion, it’s all about the song and the performance, not the gender.”
7. “Women in country music have always been a staple and always been important.”
8. “I did ballet, jazz, and all that, but I think hip-hop is really where I learned rhythm and groove, which has helped me in music.”
9. “I remember telling myself when I got to start having artist opportunities, ‘Let yourself be a fan, because you are. The minute that you walk in a room with Carrie Underwood, and you’re too cool to freak out, you need to check yourself.’ I just let myself be a fan.”
10. “It took a while to learn to eat healthy on the road. It’s really hard. Really, really hard. But on the bus, I can use the stovetop in the morning to make a veggie scramble. And have lots and lots and lots of coffee. I try to have protein for dinner so I have energy for the show.”
11. “It wasn’t supposed to work—being a new artist, a female artist, an artist on an independent. That’s what made it so much sweeter when we hit No. 1.”
12. “Growing up in east Tennessee gave me my country roots, my twang, and a lot of my stories.”
13. “As a young girl, there are pressures that come with any career, but I decided when I got into this I didn’t want to be perfect.”
14. “Sometimes, if I really just need to unwind and kind of watch something that isn’t gonna stress me out or have drama in it, I watch Spongebob.”
15. “The greatest gift I’ve been given is being naive because I don’t know what I can’t do. And when you don’t know what you can’t do, you think you can do everything.”
16. “I’ve always been drawn to the message of ‘Be yourself. Love yourself.’ I need to be reminded of that all time.”
17. “There’s value in being a normal person.”
18. “I was this little blond girl with a guitar case bigger than me – it was pink and sparkly at the time. But I always took myself seriously, and I think that people took that seriously. I would tell them about my goal list, and they listened. I was like, ‘I want to be the one that swings the pendulum.'”
19. “I started writing songs by myself. That always came from whatever I was feeling and being honest about that because I never had any intention of anyone ever hearing them.”
20. “I was raised on a farm in East Tennessee, and my first concert was Britney Spears. It’s my job as a country music artist, to be honest about that.”
Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for CMT
