Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

My thanks as always for clicking and listening along.

Got a really good one for you this week with a country star who has crossed over to big mainstream

success. Her name is Kelsey Ballerini. She's out now with her fifth album. This one is called

Patterns. It comes on the heels of her previous Grammy-nominated album

Rolling up the Welcome Mat, which very personally detailed her divorce a couple of years ago.

She has come up from Knoxville, Tennessee, where she fell in love with music at a very young

age, started writing songs when she was 12 years old,

moved with her mother to Nashville when she was 15 years old, and began what she describes

as kind of a slow-burn career, a rise up through the music industry. She feels like as she puts

it, she's in this puberty phase, which is she's not really new anymore.

She's been in, first album came out in 2015. She's ready to make that leap and catch the wave and

she feels like she has and in many ways she got the Grammy nomination for her

previous album this year that happened and now she has sold out Madison Square Garden.

She's played an arena show at her hometown in Knoxville but this feels like

something different and special feels like she's on the brink of

superstardom. She talks about how Taylor Swift became a mentor

kind of took her under her wing very early on, offering her support and

guidance and how to navigate all of this. And so she has had success

over her five albums. She has won awards in the country community. She was

nominated for this Grammy, but now on to bigger and better things, she hoped.

So I hope you enjoy getting to know Kelsey Balarini

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