Kelsea Ballerini Opens Up About the Inspiration Behind Three Songs on Her Upcoming Album, “Unapologetically”

Kelsea Ballerini will release her upcoming sophomore album, Unapologetically, on Nov. 3.

The new album features 12 songs that Kelsea wrote or co-wrote, and she recently revealed the inspiration behind three of the new songs, including the title track as well as her “favorite song on the record.”

Track 6
“In Between”
Written by Kelsea Ballerini , Jimmy Robbins and Shane McAnally

“This is my favorite song on the record. This is the last song I wrote for the record. I realized I had written a lot about the heartbreak and I had written a lot about the love, but I needed a song for me about where I was at and where I am at right now in my life. It’s my favorite song on the record.

Track 7
“High School”
Written by Kelsea Ballerini

“I wrote ‘High School’ the week after my last record was done. And it was too late to put it on there. I was devastated. It’s the first song I had written by myself in two years and it’s the only song I’ve written by myself since. And it was just this really weird, pure moment of I had just gone to my hometown. I had just been reminded of a lot of things that had happened and I realized that, like, some people never really leave who they are in high school and some people do.”

Track 10
“Unapologetically”
Written by Kelsea Ballerini , Forest Glen Whitehead and Hillary Lindsay

“I have never really written a proper love song until this song. I wrote this three weeks after meeting Morgan Evans. Album titles, I obsess over them, because I really think that not only do they capture the 12 songs you put on the record, but they capture the whole chapter of what that record will entail. So The First Time was perfect because it was the first time I got to do everything. It wasn’t just the title of the record, it was the title of that whole chapter of my life. When I was writing for [Unapologetically], and when I was picking the songs and when I was just deciding who I want to be. I was like, ‘I just want to be me,’ whoever that is, like, unapologetically this. So when I wrote this song, I feel like that’s what this is, it’s every corner of who I am—happy, sad, good, bad. That’s why I picked it as the album title.”

Unapologetically Track Listing & Songwriters