Black River EntertainmentThis March, right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelsea Ballerini released her third studio album, kelsea. It was an uncertain time in the music industry and beyond, and the singer had to forgo a lot of the special events and promotion she’d planned due to quickly escalating social distancing measures.

But even more frustratingly, Kelsea tells People, was the fact that her plans for the music itself weren’t going to pan out the way she’d planned when she made the record.

“We made kelsea, the album, to tour it. It’s an album made for being commercial and being on the radio and singing it really loud with a lot of people in a big venue,” the singer explains. “That was our plan this year, to launch a big tour that happens in the fall, and then obviously all that went away.”

Kelsea admits that for a while, she felt discouraged. “I kind of got into a funk,” she says.

But finding a new way to connect with her songs led her to recording ballerini, the intimate, reimagined version of the project.

“So we made it for people in their living rooms, people having a glass of wine and people who have the time and space right now that they wouldn’t have normally to actually listen to a record, probably differently than they would have, had things been different this year,” she explains.

The reimagined project, including a new version of Kelsea’s current single “hole in the bottle,” is out now.

By Carena Liptak
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