Kelsea Ballerini goes on a ‘first-name basis’ on third album

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kelsea Ballerini is an oversharer, both on social media and in songs, and those inner conversations, anxieties and obsessions show a country star navigating fame and pop music on her third album “kelsea.” “I am loud and I talk too much,” Ballerini, 26, admits. I am aware of that.” She starts the highly personal record, out on Friday, with the song “overshare,” relating the time she got drunk and weepy in front of strangers and the other time she embarrassed herself in front of a celebrity But Ballerini’s portrait of a young star straddling country and pop isn’t just an Instagram feed of famous friends and exotic locales. For this record, she leaned into that more heavily than before, co-writing with Ed Sheeran, Julia Michaels, Halsey and Tayla Parx, a co-writer of Ariana Grande’s hits “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings.” Halsey and Ballerini’s fast friendship formed over rounds of late-night karaoke in a Nashville dive bar, and when Ballerini decided to write a dark sounding duet, she thought of the “Bad at Love” pop star. But even as Ballerini eases into the pop world, she also has her feet planted in country music, duetting with fellow Knoxville-native Kenny Chesney on the nostalgic “half of my hometown,” and her first real drinking song, the twangy “hole in the bottle.” She ends the album with “la,” a song she wrote by herself, about her need to stay grounded amid the shiny lights of red carpets and parties.