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Kelsea Ballerini Revealed Her CMT Throwback Performance

Author Nancy Brooks // Country Writer, Beasley Media Group

Kelsea Ballerini revealed her CMT Throwback performance, and it’s the song that started it all for the country star. She is already in Austin, Texas, getting ready to host and perform at the 2024 CMT Music Awards, which will air live on CBS on Sunday (4/7).

Kelsea Ballerini Revealed Her CMT Throwback - Kelsea in Texas promoted the CMT Music Award and is wearing a red dress and holding a phone.

Kelsea is in Texas this week promoting the 2024 CMT Music Awards, which she will host and will air on Sunday (4/7).
Catherine Powell/ Getty Images 

Kelsea Ballerini Revealed Her CMT Throwback

Kelsea said what song she would perform on the show, and it was her first single. She posted a photo of the single cover from ten years ago and a clip of the song to Instagram.

Her Instagram Post

She captioned the post to her four million followers, “Ten years ago, I was twenty, naive, starry-eyed, and absolutely relentless on putting my music out into the world. I’m proud to say nothing has changed…except a DECADE of this wildly beautiful journey we’ve gotten to share full of tours and sing-alongs, wins and losses, and growing up together.”

She continued, “Soooo, before we move into new music (yes, it’s coming, I swear), I wanted to celebrate the beginning with you.”

Reimagined Ten Years Later

“The song that started it all, Love Me Like You Mean It (reimagined and ten years later), comes out tomorrow night at midnight. Oh, and I’ll be performing it on the @cmt awards on Sunday. See you there. Love you, mean it.”

RELATED: Kelsea Ballerini Won’t Be Acting On Boyfriend’s Show

She closed with, “(thank you @alysavanderheym for helping me add some 2024 spice and your brilliance to this little song that could, and @reidgah for cooking up this lil teaser track).”

Ballerini recently shared her tattoos and took some time to take questions from fans on her Insta Stories, talked about her happiness, and showed off all her ink.

Tattoos

Wearing a gray tank top and a black camo ball cap, she showed off her tattoos. She said, “I have a tattoo. This is from a song on my first record, Square Pegs. And I have this mountain with a view. I have my hummingbird, which is my favorite tattoo. I have a wave on my hip, and that’s it. Oh no, I have a little Virgo and a butterfly. They are tiny and dainty.”

She added with a smile, “That’s all for now, sorry mom.”

Choosing To Be Happy

In the following video slide, Kelsea talked about her happiness. She said, “Happiness is a choice. I go through days where I wake up, and I feel super overwhelmed or anxious or unsure of so much. But I think that there is really something to the power of choosing to be happy and positive choosing to be.”

She continued, “Our minds and our thoughts are so powerful; choosing to find silver linings, choosing to think good thoughts is hard cause life is not linear, but yeah, I’m happy. I’m choosing to be happy, but I actually am also happy.”

Top Five Fun Kelsea Ballerini Songs

  • "Yeah Boy" (2016)

    A fun song found on her debut album, “The First Time.” The music video for the song is an ode to the 1990s. Ballerini is shown performing the song in a colorful bodysuit in front of a neon backdrop and a brick wall spray-painted with graffiti, with female backup dancers. When the song came out, Kelsea was touring with Rascal Flatts and headlining her own “The FirstTime Tour.”

  • "Heartfirst" (2022)

    This is a song on Ballerini’s “Subject To Change” album, which seemed to catapult her to a new level of fame. Kelsea wrote the song with Alysa Vanderheym and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild in July 2021. According to Ballerini, it was the first song that she ever wrote where she did not come up with the title first; instead, the opening line, “Met him at a party / Accidentally brushed his body / On the way to get a drink at the bar” was the first lyric she wrote for the song.

  • "Dibs" (2015)

    The fun song she named her dog after. The official music video for “Dibs” premiered on October 22, 2015. The video consists of footage Ballerini took while on tour in York, Pennsylvania, Greenville, South Carolina, and St. Leonard, Maryland, performing in front of live crowds, celebrating her 22nd birthday, and spending time with her dog. The chorus sings, Yeah, I’m callin’ dibs / On your lips / On your kiss / On your time / Boy, I’m callin’ dibs / On your hand / On your heart / All mine.”

  • "Hole in the Bottle" (2020)

    Kelsea happily joins the country music ranks with a drinking song; a remix of the song featuring Shania Twain was released five months after the original single came out. The music video begins with a vintage black-and-white style with Ballerini dressed in flapper wardrobe reminiscent of the 1920s. Once the first chorus hits, colored scenes are introduced, and she is shown in a house painting a portrait of her dog Dibs in a field with a couple of friends who join her in lounging on a bed and performing a dance routine with the singer and playing chess with herself.

  • "If You Go Down (I'm Goin' Down Too)" (2022)

    This song is a gem and puts Kelsea in the same company of “fun” murder songs like the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.” Ballerini said when the song came out, it was actually to evoke thoughts of the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise” and The Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.” She told us then, “We really wanted to lean into a very ’90s country feel, and so we brought in fiddle for the song, which I think to me makes it. That’s also why there’s a Chicks reference to it, which everyone picks up on, which was absolutely intentional. I didn’t want to make it sound like anything else on the record. I wanted it to be its own moment.”

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.

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Author Nancy Brooks // Country Writer, Beasley Media Group
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