MusicRowPics: Kelsea Ballerini

Kelsea Ballerini visit

Kelsea Ballerini just might be country’s female answer to the whole bro-country craze. Not afraid to blend country and pop influences with rock overtones and even a touch of hip-hop flavor at times, this Black River Entertainment songwriter and artist’s songs are undeniably catchy.

The Knoxville, Tenn. native visited MusicRow‘s office to perform songs from her self-titled Black River digital EP. “XO” is a rap-influenced kiss-off to an under-committed lover, while “Dibs” is a flirty, infectious country-pop confection. She showcased her soft side in the earnest ballad “Stilettos,” a track that didn’t make the EP, but one Ballerini predicts will make her upcoming full-length album.

Ballerini began writing songs at 13. “I always loved music, but I never thought it was what I wanted to do until I started writing. It just kind of  fell into my lap and I never really stopped writing songs. So I moved to Nashville when I was 15 years old with my mom and tried to figure out what to do. I ended up signing a publishing deal first, and I did that for a year before I signed my deal.”

Like most writers, Ballerini has found a group of fellow songwriters that share her vision and musical influences. “Josh Kerr, Catt Gravitt and Forest Whitehead and Jennifer Denmark are my go-to writers,” Ballerini says. “I know that whenever I write with that group of people, I’ll get something I will like.” In fact, Kerr accompanied her on guitar during the visit to MusicRow.

She ended the performance with her current single, “Love Me Like You Mean It,” a song that has gotten a lot of performances during Ballerini’s recent 22-week radio tour. “I always remember being in that period of being a songwriter…I always wanted to be an artist. That was my dream and goal,” she says. “I knew I needed to find a sound and a song that was different. I remember one night I got together with a bunch of writer friends and we were eating pizza and listening to Rihanna’s ‘Take A Bow,’ which is such a swagger song. She drips swagger in that song. Forest said, ‘Kelsea, you need a song with swag in it.’ And I thought that was funny because anyone who knows me knows I have little to no swag,” she quipped. “We wrote this song, and it felt really natural, and he did a demo for it. I remember listening to it, and thinking, ‘This is it, this is my sound.’ So this is the cornerstone for everything on the EP and everything on the record.”