Kelsea Ballerini

A singer/songwriter who helped blur the boundaries between country and pop in the 2010s, Kelsea Ballerini made a big name for herself at a young age. Born in Tennessee in 1993, Ballerini wrote her first song when she was 12; she moved to Nashville a few years later and signed her first record deal when she was 19. Her 2014 debut single “Love Me Like You Mean It” established her songwriting style, blending naturalistic lyrics with country-music ideals, and its follow-ups from her debut album, The First Time, the bittersweet “Peter Pan” and the coyly flirtatious “Dibs”, cemented it further. She released her second album, Unapologetically, in 2017; its ballads showed off her voice’s maturity and range, while the strutting “Miss Me More” foreshadowed her collaborations with major pop artists like Halsey and The Chainsmokers. The 2019 Grand Ole Opry inductee continued forging her own path in modern country-pop with 2020’s Kelsea, which features a duet with stadium-country heavyweight Kenny Chesney and heartfelt lyrics about small-town life as well as of-the-moment electronics and co-writes from pop architects Ed Sheeran and Julia Michaels. Ballerini’s constant blending—of tradition and mould-breaking, acoustic and electronic, Nashville and Los Angeles—is why she became a country-music breakout during the 2010s. Since 2020, she's also been the host of kelsea radio on Apple Music Country.