About

The idea there would be any fear or self-consciousness from the 30-year old songwriter, whose wildly revealing Rolling Up The Welcome Mat was both a Country Music Association and GRAMMY (Country) "Album of the Year" nominee, is startling. But the honey-voiced songstress, known as much for her commercial lean, emerged from the trip wanting to shatter expectations.

“I knew that everyone expects me to be sunshine and rainbows, weather the storms, gooey, gushy love songs,” she offers. “But I knew we could keep that in-the-emotions of Welcome Mat, which was a season of life, with all the details and the moments – and move forward. This is more diary, less interview. It took me several months of writing to figure it out.”

Back on the bus, Ballerini saw the power of a girl gang: the laughter, the challenging, the “why not?” These were her song sisters, not Music Row appointments and tropes. She knew what she had to do. “Literally, I said, ‘Hey, girls, can you get your calendars and find some blocks of time?’ I know these are some of the most in-demand creative people in the world. I was like, ‘Let’s do this together!’ It had been unlike any creative retreat I’d ever done. I realized I wanted to feel safe, to protect the whole humanness of what we were writing. And I’ve always loved the clever hook, the turn of phrase, but this wasn’t that – and that’s what made me happy. This was my heart in my song.”

What emerged was PATTERNS, 15 songs that sifted and sorted not just the time since emerging from a very public divorce, but finding love, seeking deeper understanding of self and new challenges. Whether the male vulnerability-affirming duet “Cowboys Cry Too,” with Adult Alternative sensation Noah Kahan, who’d merged his “Stick Season” with her “Mountain With A View” on the Academy of Country Music Awards, the drama-jettisoning flat-line, “it is what it is okay” of “We Broke Up” or the surrender to love with knowing all that comes with it ”Baggage,” Ballerini is as confessional, as wide open and as pleasingly musical as she’s ever been.

“I wanted this album to really feel in the music,” explains the young woman who’s found a creative foil in Vanderheym. “We knew we’d bring in amazing players, but we really got the demos dialed in to where Alysa’d say, ‘We’re going to keep this pad, then say to (multi-instrumentalist) Ilya (Toshinsky) or (electric guitarist) Derek (Wells), ‘Can you replace this?’ It was important to me that this felt like a live record, because these songs were written in the emotions as the emotions were happening. I wanted this to feel or have that immediacy.”

Admitting there was a lot of work between song camps – “or heart camps, really” – Ballerini and her crew decamped to East Tennessee, where she’s from, and an escape in the Bahamas to keep creating what PATTERNS was going to be. Having written “This Time Last Year” before realizing the power of their collective energy: “That was originally going to be the first song, my little triumph song celebrating getting through Welcome Mat.” PATTERNS was a gear-shift, becoming as much an album of surrender as embracing the flaws that are part of who we are.

“I’ve always been an open book, but this is a different kind of deeper. Just like it was scary sharing all the details of a divorce, this is me, now. Yes, I’m in a very happy, almost two-year relationship; but it’s not all the perfect Instagram stuff you see posted. There’s family history, past relationships, all the things you bring with you, friendships, being there, not being there, showing up, not knowing…I have a massive fear of abandonment, of failing, I’m hyper-sensitive. I want to cut and run when I’m thinking it’s going to fall apart. Those are all patterns.”

And so an album title – and theme – was born. Recognizing there’s a deeper level of truth-telling when men aren’t present, the quintet dove in. “Hillary and Karen are mothers, and they brought such a maternal warmth, but that perspective, too. If I have a daughter one day, I’d be really proud to have her hear this, and hear what we’re singing.”

More than coming of age, PATTERNS is a coming into autonomy record. The self-affirming “Beg For Your Love,” which tells a lover how deep she’s in, holds a line; she spins a chorus that resolves, “I wanna go the distance, babe but can’t do it if I betray/ All the way before you work I’ve done…” Ballerini also delivers the love/hate immediacy and push/pull reality in the cascading details (sunflowers, Hemingway) of a combustive unraveling on the soaring acoustic “Two Things.” And then there’s the hushed keyboard meditation of uncertainty and put up your truth “How Much Do You Love Me” For Ballerini, that’s all part of arriving at wherever she’s ultimately bound.

Fearlessly willing to let people share the journey, she recognizes that while “Sorry Mom” may reflect the generational battles of the ages, it also shows evolution and recognition of what binds them together.

“That really is a love letter to my Mom, even if she didn’t always agree with the choices I made. It's all true: I really did miss her 58th birthday because I was on the road. You live and realize and learn over time. But then you do, and that’s the story we wanted to capture. And that’s the beautiful thing with this being all women: there were no rules; no one told me to be careful. We wanted to be defiantly not what people were expecting, but we also didn’t want to lose all the things on the boppier side of music that make us happy. After every song, we were all dancing.”

You can hear it on the percolating “Nothing Really Matters,” which invokes Sheryl Crow, runs words together and ultimately jettisons what we’re sold for those moments basted in love. Dreamy, harmony-thick on the chorus, and conversational on the verses, it’s a declaration of a self truly worth being. Ballerini knows she’s a work in progress, and she also realizes she’s not the only one. She talks about “the Penthouse Girls,” those women who come to the shows and turn to each other at key moments in certain songs and sing full voice in a bonding moment.

“I had no idea when the tour started. I’d get to the Welcome Mat songs, there were lines in ‘Penthouse,’ where it wasn’t me – or us – singing, but they were just completely in the song, singing with the people next to them like a catharsis, almost. Friends? Strangers? I don’t know, but the connection you felt.”

Committed to telling her truth, she admits she wanted to make sure there were lines for those girls and women to also scream out loud. She thinks “Baggage,” “We Broke Up,” the friendship forever “I Would, Would You,” “WAIT!” and “How Much Do You Love Me” will detonate when they sing them. “I’ve always attacked my songs from a place of empowerment, but this time there’s also a really soft, vulnerable place in the midst of all these really powerful songs.”

Ironically, “WAIT!” was the last song. Written in the throes of final vocals and midway through mixing, Ballerini realized when they changed the title to PATTERNS, something was missing. Going to Vanderheym’s intimate studio to do vocals on “Baggage,” she explained, “There’s a hole in this story. We need to write a song.” Delivered in the moment, equal parts confession, owning one’s “codependent with my independence,” throwing out the justifications and self-sabotage, it runs words together to reflect the urgency of a crisis moment. But it also strips truth down to the essence of “I’m just a girl with a boy, asking you to love me.” “It’s very cadence driven,’ Ballerini laughs. “I’m more of a personality vocalist, conversational. Maybe there’s the vocal flip up to the falsetto, but I think my style is more sharing like I’m with friends.”

Written with friends, for friends, Penthouse girls and anyone seeking their place in the world, Ballerini has entered a new reality in who and how she’s going to be. “In my first few records, I had the eyelash extensions, and wouldn’t leave the house without my high heels on, because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. You figure it out: it’s what inside, it’s the heart, not the heels…This album is all kinds of love letters, to a lot of different people. You could say it’s love-filled, but it’s not a broad stroked lovey dovey record. It’s the nuance of love, those moments in between, the stuff you don’t see, it’s not ‘Love Me Like You Mean It’ or ‘Dibs.’ It’s the truth of love, just as scary, but whether it’s your friends or your Mom or someone romantic, it’s scary and it’s sweet, and if you show up and drop your shit, it’s the things that really get you through.”

With PATTERNS' verse, chorus closer, “Did You Make It Home? (outro),” Ballerini arrives at a blessing and a benediction. “That’s really what love is all about, isn’t it? and after the journey of the fourteen songs, I hope the ending of the record finds everyone safe, healthy, and happy."