Kelsea Ballerini is up for two ACMs this Thursday, including Female Vocalist of the Year, but she’s also gracing the digital cover of ELLE’s May 2025 Women in Music issue. In her cover story, Kelsea says that her split from Morgan Evans is so far in the past that she doesn’t even want to be associated with the concept anymore.
Thanks to her 2023 intensely personal breakup EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, Kelsea says fans now come to her concerts with signs reading, “Just got a divorce.” But, she tells ELLE, “I try to never celebrate it until I know if it’s a good thing. I don’t ever want to be a poster child for divorce. It’s been three years now. It’s simply not in the forefront of my life anymore.”
“But I always make sure when these women come up to me, my first reaction is never, ‘Oh my God, congratulations!’ It’s like, ‘Are you okay?’ Because just like it needs to be destigmatized, I also don’t think it should be celebrated or glamorized,” she says.
Elsewhere in the interview, Kelsea — whose most recent album Patterns includes her duet with pop singer/songwriter Noah Kahan — says for her next musical move, “I intend to do more genre blending. That excites me.” As for the recent trend of pop stars making country music, Kelsea’s all for it.
“If we, as country artists, feel like we can have a collab on top 40 or have a collab with an R&B artist, why wouldn’t we give a welcome to someone else?” she notes.
“I think that’s where people who are pushing back really need to check themselves, because music is for everybody,” she adds. “And specifically country music — the marquee of it is it’s the people’s story.”
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