It’s 7 p.m. and Kelsea Ballerini is on stage with a crowd of 11,000 fans filling a stadium for the first time in her career. After a decade in the industry, Ballerini has become a household name, rising to Taylor Swift levels of fame, and often reaching a similar fan base. On Feb. 19, a sea of young women in denim and sparkles made their way to Newark’s Prudential Center to see the “Legends” singer live in concert.
Ballerini opened her set perched atop a mountain of suitcases, singing “Will I outgrow these patterns?” inviting her audience to pack up and move to the next stage of their lives – as she did when she left her ex-husband, Morgan Evans, after five years of marriage. In her monologue in between songs, she talked about growing pains and how you can only escape them by leaning into them.
The Country Music Association award-winning singer’s relationship with the fans and the audience is jovial. She is simultaneously full of jokes and relentlessly sincere.
A fan held up a sign that read, “You may have quit drinking, but I quit my job to be here tonight.” Ballerini balked upon reading the sign, asking the fan if she was okay, and correcting her assumption – “I didn’t quit drinking you know, it’s just a song.”
There are great things in Ballerini’s future and leaning into her natural storytelling ability will only grow her career and fan-base. As she does this, the energy at her concerts will become infectious, with all the fans on their feet, jumping and screaming along to their favorite lyrics, as we have seen with Swift’s “The Eras Tour.”
“This tour has been my dream since I was a little girl,” Ballerini confided in her audience. Her gratitude and honesty lands with her fans and will continue to be her key to success, along with her love for sparkles and red lipstick.
“I’m sensing some feminine rage tonight,” Ballerini said before she started singing the introduction to her hit song, “Miss Me More.”
While Ballerini’s response to a fan’s offer of alcohol is, “I can’t take a shot, it’s a Tuesday,” she still launched into her collaborative song with Shania Twain, “hole in the bottle,” which expresses her confusion and sadness when her bottle of wine is “already empty, and it ain’t even suppertime.”
Her songs deal in matters of the heart, romantic love, friendship, falling in love, falling out of love, getting your heart broken and everything in between. Her friendship anthem “IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO)” truthfully and humorously depicts the bond between a woman and her best friend, encapsulating that loyalty with the line “Hypothetically if you ever kill your husband / Hand on the Bible, I’d be lyin’ through my teeth.” Mourning her divorce, she sang “Two things can be true / I’ll love and hate you,” nailing the experience of loving someone after they hurt you with the song “Two Things.”
Beyond her lyricism, her catchy and evocative chord progressions, coupled with her breathy vocals – a perfect combination of Southern sweetness and country twang – transports listeners to her grandmother’s porch in the middle of summer, gossiping while sipping sweet tea.
Her wordplay shines in the lyrics, “Were you blindsided or were you just blind?” and “I know the truth is hard to hear, but it wasn’t hard to find,” in “Blindsided (Yeah, Sure, Okay).
Ballerini provided the soundtrack to a fun summer with friends, summer love and the inevitable peaks and valleys of being alive.
