Kelsea Ballerini Puts the Patterns of Her Past to Bed on 'PATTERNS (DELUXE)'
- Abby Anderson
- Mar 8
- 3 min read
Stand-out tracks: "To The Men Who Love Women After Heartbreak" "Future Tripping"
Our favorites: "Cut Me Up" "Hindsight is Happiness"
Release date: March 7, 2025
Label: Black River Entertainment
For fans of: Taylor Swift, Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves
It seems that Kelsea Ballerini has finally found peace in her patterns and unpacked her baggage. On her fifth full-length studio album, PATTERNS, Ballerini worked through her growth from once seeing love as dreamy and romantic, replacing that vision with something more raw, more vulnerable, and infinitely deeper than the starry-eyed country tracks of her past like "Peter Pan," "Legends," and "HEARTFIRST’. Now, she’s back to put her anxieties and doubts about love to bed on the deluxe edition of the album, PATTERNS (DELUXE).
PATTERNS (DELUXE), released March 7, gives a sense of finality to the PATTERNS chapter with new songs that look to the future while honoring Kelsea's past. Ballerini balances between heartfelt acoustics and some of the most pop production of her discography, encasing the twinkly "Future Tripping," punchy “Put It To Bed,” and cheeky “Cut Me Up” between soft introspections in "To The Men Who Love Women After Heartbreak" and "Hindsight is Happiness." All the new tracks were co-written with Ballerini’s long-time collaborator, Alysa Vanderheym, who has co-written and co-produced much of Ballerini’s work since 2023’s Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. “To The Men” also features co-writing credits from other frequent female collaborators including Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild and Hillary Lindsay (Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Lady Gaga).
Wearing her love on her sleeve, Kelsea floats through dreamy melodies and romantic guitar layering on "To the Men Who Love Women After Heartbreak." Kelsea has been holding on to this gem for quite a while, sharing it in only the most intimate of settings: during live performances alongside her collaborators, mentors, and friends and in the digital download version of PATTERNS shortly after its release. She's now trusting the whole world to look after this heart-bearing song, signaling a shift in her openness to embracing her vulnerability.
The happiest of anxiety spirals are wrapped up in addictive country pop bows on "Future Tripping" and "Cut Me Up." Quite simply, Kelsea is trying to stay nonchalant to protect her heart, but she's never been one to feel things only surface level. She sings, "If you've got a blade, then sharpen it/If we go goodbye, just make it quick/If me and you fell out of love/I'd be okay, but it'd cut me up." Kelsea, we heard "To The Men Who Love Women After Heartbreak" - it's okay to admit that falling out of love might do a little more than cut you up.
The chapter closes with "Hindsight is Happiness," which poignantly acknowledges the vast expanse of life that Kelsea has crossed since the days of Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. A soft, glimmering acoustic track, Ballerini is letting her past ride off into the sunset and opening the shutters to a new dawn: "You can't rewrite the past, but you can learn from it."
Overall, this group of songs honestly doesn't feel like an extension of PATTERNS, but rather an exploration of what the next chapter may hold for Kelsea.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT KELSEA BALLERINI:
