Kelsea Ballerini Keeps the Pretty-Decent Times Rolling on ‘Patterns’
When Kelsea Ballerini first emerged a decade ago, she got compared to Taylor Swift, but her pop-wise country has been defined less by big artistic swings than low-key relatability. On career highlights like the 2016 infantilized bad-boy takedown “Peter Pan,” the playful 2022 Thelma and Louise/”Goodbye Earl” riff “If You Go Down (I’m Going Down Too”), or the Kenny Chesney-abetted study in ambivalent small-town allegiance, “Half of My Hometown,” she’s always been able to maintain an evenhanded optimistic presence, even when crafting songs out of life’s less-than-upbeat moments.
Her latest, Patterns, is no different, a characteristically varied collection that finds her looking inward with honesty and resolve, staying strong without sounding too heavy about it. “Is this a battle that I’ll ever win?” she asks. The somber “Sorry Mom” and the spunky highlight “Baggage” look at life’s turmoil with good-natured resignation. On the former, she movingly thanks her mother for sticking by her through some less-than-ideal youthful interludes, now that they both know things have worked out. The buoyant “Nothing Really Matters” advises listeners to “give your demons some grace,” and suggests such demonic activity as eating cake and hanging around the house naked.
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The album shifts the sonic lens in ways that feel natural and welcome. Folk-pop superstar Noah Kahan swings by to big-up male vulnerability on the duet “Cowboys Cry Too.” The breezy “Wait,” the ballad “Deep,” and “We Broke Up,” in which the recent divorcée takes a hey-whatever attitude to relationship travails, blur country pop with R&B-leaning influences. On the happy highlight “I Would, Would You,” a squad of female backup singers throw a party as she sings about the lifelong power of ride-or-die friendship. What comes out is an album about turning life lessons into bops and today’s hardships into tonight’s drink orders.
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