Kelsea Ballerini Explains Why She + Husband Morgan Evans Don’t Co-Write: ‘We’re Pretty Brutal’
Kelsea Ballerini lives in a musical household — her husband, Morgan Evans, is also a country singer-songwriter — but she says that co-writing isn't typically something she and Evans do in their downtime.
"We don't," Ballerini tells guest host Chelsea Handler during a recent stop on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which also marked the country singer's first-ever late night interview.
"Because we do the same thing all the time, so we already bring it home," she elaborates. "Imagine then coming home and you're like, 'Hey, like this hook? You wanna write it?' It's just too much."
Ballerini goes on to say that, while she does typically play new material for Evans, she'll typically only play him songs that she's already pretty committed to recording.
"We both show each other everything. We're pretty brutal," she elaborates. "So I can only show him something if I'm like, 'I know I love this, so even if he thinks it sucks, I'm still gonna hang my hat on it.'"
Still, Ballerini says that that brutal criticism is a good thing.
"I think you have to have that with anyone in your inner circle," she reflects. "You need that brutal honesty to know if it's good or not."
It isn't just the singer's husband who's got a tell-it-like-it-is approach to her new music.
"It's pretty honest all the time. My mom is pretty honest with me. Morgan. I have a really small, amazing, epic group of best, best girlfriends and they are so unimpressed with me all the time," she says. "That's good. It keeps me as normal as I can be."
Ballerini recently released "Heartfirst," the first single off an as-yet-unannounced new album. For his part, Evans also has new material in the works. He recently tweeted that he's in the studio working on The Country & the Coast Side B, the follow-up to Side A of that project, which came out in October 2021.