Kelsea Ballerini's collaboration "Half of My Hometown" with Kenny Chesney has had major success in recent months. She stopped by the Bobby Bones Show to talk about the song, her recent projects, and when fans can expect new music.
Ballerini has several projects in the works. Recently she's been working with Dolly Parton on a few different things. Ballerini is set to perform with Parton at the ACM Awards. The two of them are collaborating on a song off of Parton's recent album Run, Rose, Run, which is a companion album to her book with James Patterson. The same book where Parton asked Ballerini to voice one of the characters for the audio book. Another collaboration for Ballerini has been her song with Chesney "Half of My Hometown." Ballerini shared the song wasn't written originally as a duet, but when she sent him the song, he signed on to do it the next day. She didn't re-record her parts for their duet, but Chesney let Ballerini be in the studio when he recorded his parts of the song. She noted the whole situation felt similar to when she recorded "Hole in a Bottle" with Shania Twain. Both Chesney and Twain wanted to be sure Ballerini was getting what she wanted from them for her song, which made them "even cooler" to her. A fantasy collaboration for Ballerini would have been Frank Sinatra, noting that she's likely done with collaborations for awhile. She feels like she's done so many lately that she's ready to work on music solo.
Fans have probably noticed that Ballerini has been more active on social media. She thanked TikTok for allowing her to show off more of her personality, while also revealing less of her personal life. Ballerini said that it has made social media be more of an even trade-off for her. Noting that she realized despite her chosen career path, she could still have things that she kept for herself. Ballerini has used her social media platforms to be open about her struggles, one of them being her struggle with body image. She partnered up with the company Aerie for the last few years because they were the first company to ever not re-touch the photos of their models. The company is all about having real women in their campaigns. Ballerini is happy to be doing the work with Aerie now, but admitted she wasn't in the headspace or confident enough to be doing a partnership like this one years ago. Body image struggles are still hard for Ballerini, adding that she doesn't think there is anything wrong with using filters as long as people realize it's an altered reality.
As for when fans can expect new music, Ballerini shared she's working on it right now. She has finished writing and now she's working on putting the project together, but does plan to sit on the new music for a bit.