Kelsea Ballerini Seemingly Shades Halsey on New Album

Kelsea Ballerini’s new album, Subject to Change, was released on Friday and it includes plenty of references to the latest developments in her life since she released her 2020 album, Kelsea. The record is her first since Ballerini, 29, and Morgan Evans, 37, spit in late August and the album hints at their relationship ending. It also includes nods to Ballerini’s relationships with other stars, including possible shade thrown Halsey’s way.

In the song “Doin’ My Best,” Ballerini references an unnamed pop star, notes Us Weekly. “I was friends with a pop star. I put ’em on track four, but wish I could take it back,” she sang. “I woulda never asked if I knew we wouldn’t talk anymore.”

That pop star is likely Halsey, who was featured on “The Other Girl,” which was the fourth song on Kelsea. They performed it live on CMT Crossroads and at the CMT awards in 2020. Halsey did not contribute to Subject to Change. The only song on the new album to feature other singers is “You’re Drunk, Go Home,” with Kelly Clarkson and Carly Pearce.

“There are songs on this record that I’m a little nervous for people to hear,” Ballerini admitted in a Consequence interview, but she didn’t confirm if she was referring to Halsey in the song. “I’m a human, and life is messy, and there’s some things that I wanted to take ownership for,” she continued. “It’s a little embarrassing and a little cringy, but that’s my human experience.”

Although the album hit stores less than a month after Ballerini announced her divorce from Evans, it was clearly written and recorded as their marriage was ending. There are multiple songs that detail what happened between them. In “I Guess They Call It Fallin,’” Ballerini appears to be singing about their whirlwind romance ending. They got engaged in December 2016 after nine months of dating and married the following year.

In “Weather” and “Walk in the Park,” Ballerini wrote about them changing their minds about one another. “Sometimes I’m a summer day, sometimes I start raining, always one season away from everything changing,” she sang in “Walk in the Park.” “I’m always looking for greener grass, on a carousel that goes too fast. Up and down like a swing set heart, I’m no walk in the park.”

“Doin’ My Best” also includes lines about going to therapy and the disadvantages of marrying at a young age. In 2020, her “therapy for one turned… into therapy for two,” she sings. Ballerini told Extra in April she and Evans were in couple’s therapy. “I think it’s really important. Obviously, we have a strange life,” she said. “Like, we are both really busy and don’t get to spend as much time together … And just trying to find, like, the things that work for us.”