There’s a moment fixed in Kelsea Ballerini‘s mind when she really felt like she’d made it.
It happened in 2023 at the University of Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena, where she’d seen Kelly Clarkson perform and decided to follow her own musical dreams.
Kelsea reminisced about the career high with her fellow coaches on The Voice this season.
“I did my first arena show as a headliner in my hometown, at that same place I was telling you about where I saw Kelly,” she remembered. “Kenny Chesney, who was like my hometown hero from Knoxville, came out and sang with me.”
“I wish I could go back and show 14-year-old me that photo, because there was so many times in my life that I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ And I just, I kind of felt like that’s a moment I can always hang my hat on,” she says.
Of course, Kelsea and Kenny topped the chart and won multiple awards for their 2021 single together, “half of my hometown.”
You can watch as Kelsea helps make others’ dreams come true on The Voice, Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
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