"My real hope is for us to continue growing, healing, and evolving together with acceptance and kindness."
Kelsea Ballerini (Source: Supplied/Press Photo)
Next Friday, 11 August, Kelsea Ballerini will unveil the deluxe version of her Rolling Up The Welcome Mat EP, but with some revisions.
For one, the EP title has (For Good) at the end, while Penthouse is now the (Healed Version), Interlude is (Full Length), and Blindsided is (Yeah, Sure, Okay). You can pre-save the release to your streaming library here.
“It’s kinda scary opening a wound that time has mended,” Ballerini quoted in an Instagram post yesterday (2 August). “…but this unexplainably transformative welcome mat had one last bit of rolling up to do.”
Telling fans that the re-release is just for them, she elaborated, “the added outro’s that we ended up scream-singing nightly on tour, the lyric changes along a healing journey, hearing you very loudly explain that the INTERLUDE NEEDS TO BE A FULL SONG KELSEA COME ON. plus, a new song to bring the story more up to date.”
With the announcement, Ballerini asked for a favour. “I ask that you help this be ours and let the music simply be the music, not dig back into the experience that it was written about nearly a year ago,” she wrote. “As a songwriter, producer, artist I’m proud and protective of this EP, and as a woman and human also proud and protective of the new, happy season of life I’m in.
“My real hope is for us to continue growing, healing, and evolving together with acceptance and kindness (even when we unleash our inner fire breathing dragon singing the new versions of these songs). am I right?”
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In case you missed it: Rolling Up The Welcome Mat is Ballerini’s first release since her divorce from fellow country music artist, Australia’s Morgan Evans.
In August 2022, Ballerini announced she and Evans were divorcing after almost five years of marriage. The country singers first met in March 2016 while co-hosting the CMC Awards and wed in December 2017 in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, after a year-long engagement.