
Kelsea Ballerini
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
So sunny that her sharp songwriting can be overshadowed, Kelsea Ballerini nimbly navigated the line separating country and pop in the second half of the 2010s before she decided to ignore borders altogether in the subsequent decade. Ballerini had hit singles right out of the gate, racking up three successive Billboard Country Airplay chart-toppers "Love Me Like You Mean It," "Dibs," and Peter Pan" — between 2014 and 2016, laying the foundation for a career that subtly adapted to shifting trends. Her versatility meant that she didn't stay strictly in a country lane. In 2018, Ballerini sang "This Feeling," a single by the EDM outfit the Chainsmokers, and in 2020, she invited Halsey to sing on "The Other Girl," a single pulled from the Kelsea album. She also worked with LANY on 2021's "I Quit Drinking." These digressions into the mainstream didn't negate her country roots — a sound she returned to on her 2022 album Subject to Change — but rather illustrated how fluid, flexible, and modern her brand of country pop was.