Coming October 25, 2024 pre-order your copy today! Orders with both pre-order and in stock items will have all in stock items shipped immediately!
5th Full-Length Pressed on Saturn & Moon Color Vinyl 2LP!
Includes "Sorry Mom" & "Cowboys Cry Too" feat. Noah Kahan!
2025 Grammy® Award Nominee:
• Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical: Jessie Jo Dillon ("Sorry Mom")
• Best Country Duo/Group Performance: "Cowboys Cry Too" with Noah Kahan
Patterns is Kelsea Ballerini's follow-up to 2023's Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, an EP and short film that told the story of the dissolution of a marriage. Unlike Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, which she describes as a reflective release, Patterns is active and in the moment. "The heartbeat" of the album is about "analyzing yourself and the people that you love the most in order to grow."
That comes across in the track "Cowboys Cry Too," featuring Noah Kahan — the only collaboration on the album and an empathic look at toxic masculinity from a female perspective — and the single "Sorry Mom." It is a swaying, guitar-pop confessional with intergenerational appeal, and it will no doubt strike a chord.
"It's an intimate song," she says. "The first line is, 'Sorry, mom, I smelled like cigarettes.' You know, it's the things that your mom doesn't really want to hear. But then you get to the chorus and the meat of it and the heart of it, and it's a letter of thanks to my mom for raising me the way she did."
"Sorry Mom" is one of many love songs on the album: Like "Cowboys," which was written for the men in her life, or a lush song of self-preservation and celebration called "First Rodeo," that's romantic in theme. These are the kind of songs that can be realized in a safe writing and recording environment.
To make Patterns, Ballerini enlisted an all-woman team. She co-produced and co-wrote the album with Alysa Vanderheym, and also worked with songwriters Jessie Jo Dillon, Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild and Hillary Lindsey. "I've never felt so safe making an album before, top to bottom. There was more pressure on this record just because of all the ears and eyeballs that Welcome Mat got," Ballerini says. "And so, I wanted to safely make this one where I didn't feel the pressure from the inside."
That level of comfortability allowed for exciting experimentation as well. Ballerini is a country musician, through-and-through, but she has is unafraid to take genre-bending risks, particularly on this album.
"To me, what makes me undoubtedly country is my storytelling and my songwriting. And that will never waver or change. But, per usual, I didn't overthink whether there was a banjo or a beat drop. And there are both on this record, as there have been on my other ones," she says. "I think lyrically and content wise, I really just was team no rules. Nothing's off limits."There are lighter songs here, and darker ones, self-discovery and insecurity, as well as different geographies. New York and South Carolina are characters, Ballerini exploring her "hair down human me and the more dressed up, nervous, outward facing me," she says.
"It's my job to make a record that has something for everyone. But that comes from making a record that's true to me, and that's what I did," she concludes. "And so, I just hope people feel something," while listening. "Whatever it is."
Features
- Double LP
- Saturn & Moon Color Vinyl
Selections
To Be Announced
