Kelsea Ballerini Song ‘Doin’ My Best’ Reveals She and Halsey Are No Longer Friends
Music can be a window to the soul, and Kelsea Ballerini is baring hers in her fourth studio album release. Subject to Change details the ups and downs of her own growth, along with the changing landscape of her love life and friendships. Among other relationships, Ballerini gets pretty direct about the faded friendship with singer Halsey. The two had a well-documented friendship, and collaborated and performed together.
However, in the single “Doin’ My Best,” Ballerini alludes to the fact that the two aren’t even speaking. The country phenom says she doesn’t mean to throw shade at the pop singer with the new lyrics, but instead chalked it up to things getting messy after the two started working together.
Kelsea Ballerini and Halsey became friends in 2018
Ballerini, 29, and Halsey, 28, started hanging out after running into one another at Halsey’s 2018 performance in Nashville during her Hopeless Fountain Kingdom tour. The two jokingly disagreed about how they became close in a 2020 interview with CMT. Ballerini said she played it cool when she met Halsey backstage, but the “So Good” singer says the country star dragged her out to karaoke.
The pair documented their night out on social media, according to People, and Ballerini said later they hit it off. “We’re both really similar in age and had a lot to talk about; it was cool to be around someone who’s so creative and so driven and so down-to-earth,” she said. “She really is so lovely. I feel like I made a new friend.”
Shortly after the two became friends, Ballerini penned “The Other Girl,” which later became the infamous Track No. 4 on her third album Kelsea. The “I Quit Drinking” artist hadn’t had collaborators on her albums before, and wanted to work with people she knew well.
“On [Kelsea] I was like, ‘I only want collaborations if they’re my friends. I don’t want to go to some pop star that I don’t know… I just want to do it if it makes sense to me.” Halsey also performed with Ballerini on a CMT Crossroads episode, which pairs country stars with artists from other genres.
Ballerini says mixing business and friendship with Halsey got ‘really awkward’
Apparently, introducing a business relationship into the duo’s friendship was more complicated than they anticipated. Ballerini shares her side in “Doin’ My Best,” in which she freely admits she doesn’t always get things right. “I was friends with a pop star / I put ’em on track four, but / Wish I could take it back, I would’ve nevеr asked / If I knew we wouldn’t talk anymorе,” she sings in the second verse.
In a follow-up interview with People, Ballerini said she meant “no shade” toward the “Nightmare” artist. “…Sometimes that becomes really awkward and sometimes there’s competition involved and sometimes you try to like, do something together cause they’re your friend and you want to share art together and you introduce business into it and it just messes everything up,” she said.
According to Ballerini, writing her 2021 book of poetry Feeling Your Way Through inspired a greater sense of self-awareness. She almost didn’t include more personal tracks like “Doin’ My Best” on her album, but she felt it was important.
“‘Doin’ My Best’ was one that I almost didn’t… I really had to have a hard conversation with myself to put it on,” Ballerini said. “I was like, ‘Man, I think I’m doing myself a real disservice to not go further into what the book opened up for me…It unlocked this depth artistically that I hadn’t gone to yet.”
The track also hints at her divorce from Morgan Evans
Fans might not be used to this level of candor in Ballerini’s music, but recent headlines confirm she’s going through it. The country star filed for divorce from her husband, fellow country music star Morgan Evans, in August. The pair married in 2017 following a whirlwind courtship, and were public about the work and therapy they put into their relationship. However, the two have called it quits. The breakdown of the relationship wasn’t an overnight shock, as Ballerini also alludes to the conflict in “Doin’ My Best.”
“And therapy for one turned / Into therapy for two / When you get married that young / You got a lotta sh*t you gotta get through,” she sings in the opening verse. Ballerini said she wrote the track in a stream-of-consciousness style, getting out all the “cringy” emotions or things she might be embarrassed by. (There’s also a nod to an ill-advised Tweet in the lyrics.)
Album sales for Subject to Change indicate fans are embracing the more vulnerable side of the performer: Opening day sales propelled Ballerini to No. 1 on the U.S. iTunes’ all-genres chart, per Headline Planet.
