When Kelsea Ballerini stepped onto the Grand Ole Opry stage on Saturday night (Jan. 22), she brought an unreleased new song with her.
From the stage, the singer asked her fans for their feedback as to whether or not she should put the song on her next album, crossing her fingers in nervousness as she launched into her performance.
A meditation on the importance of being grateful for what you have — and a realization that comparing yourself to others won’t ultimately make you happy — the new song is a sweet, simple, introspective ballad.
“I’m doin’ alright, right where I’m at / With what I have,” Ballerini sings in the chorus of the new song.
In the second verse, her lyrics tell a story of purchasing a high-end pair of Louboutin shoes: As she sang it live, Ballerini shrugged and slipped off her pink high heels. “The Joneses can’t even keep up with the Joneses,” she continues.
The new song’s lighthearted wisdom about finding happiness, Ballerini remarked from the stage, comes from a new perspective that she discovered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m finding is what I think probably a lot of us have found: In the last couple of years … as we’ve kind of been forced to step back and look at our lives and had a lot of time to do that, it’s made you kind of look at what you have differently,” the singer explained, ”And for me, I’ve started to really appreciate the little things a lot more.”
She also revealed to the crowd that she just started work on a new album, and was hoping for some feedback on whether or not this new song should make the tracklist. Ballerini didn’t share the title of her new track, though some social media posts have listed the song’s name as “What I Have.”
“I just started making an album,” Ballerini noted to fans in attendance. “I’m in the really early stages and it’s still kinda coming together and I’m still trying to figure it out.”
The singer’s latest project, Kelsea, and its introspective companion version, Ballerini, came out in 2020. Since then, she also released a book of poetry called Feel Your Way Through.
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