Seven-time and current Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year nominee Kelsea Ballerini recently teased her upcoming Mount Pleasant EP with the reflective “I Sit In Parks” on Nov. 7.
With an accompanying video capturing the country-pop forward songwriter considering choices, sacrifices and real-life costs as she sits on a swing in a park. “Parks” continues Ballerini’s startling openness in unpacking her world for her art.
While much has been made of willingness to live in the wide open, “Parks” delivers a whisper sweet vocal that takes an exceptionally private tour of this moment assessment. Weighing personal desires, the reality of achieving success and wondering about the things her friends are all experiencing, she coos, “I sit in parks, it breaks my heart/ Cause I see just how far I am from the things that I want…”
Having achieved things most people can’t begin to imagine – TIME100 Next, “Saturday Night Live,” New York Times profiles, headlining tours – Ballerini faces the commitment and reality of what her peers are now living as she watches a young family spending a Saturday afternoon, playing and sharing a picnic. Maybe not since KT Oslin’s Grammy and CMA Song of the Year “80s Ladies” has country music had such a deep truth about the state of the promise “you can have it all.”
“I have always made records – whether songs, EPs or albums – to capture a moment in time,” says the woman whose had a pair of both CMA and Grammy nominations for Country Album of the Year. “Mount Pleasant is a collection of six songs I’ve written throughout the summer, marking a chapter of heavy self-examination, longing and stepping further into who I am as a 32-year old woman.”
