Keslea Ballerini dropped new song ‘Sorry Mom' from her upcoming ‘Patterns' album yesterday and boy, is it a personal and honest look back at her relationship with her mother that is bound to relate to parents and grown up children everywhere!
Starting with the line, ‘Sorry Mom I smelled like cigarettes….' Kelsea goes on to reference hangovers on Sunday mornings, having sex and losing her virginity and behaviour that lead to lines like, ‘I know you're not impressed with my lack of sticking to the bible.'
‘I turned out alright, so you can sleep good at night,' Ballerini offers as condolence. ‘Maybe we got into a few fights…….I know it took a little tough love to become the woman that you're proud of,' she sings, making us wonder what she got up to in those early days of her career in Nashville!! Ballerini also deals with walking away from college without graduating, wasting two years money and she also touches upon missing birthdays and being ‘on another plane' which could have a double meaning.
“I couldn’t have started a song with ‘Sorry Mom I smelled like cigarettes…,” offers the candid voice of a generation. “But that was the thing with these writers: everyone was encouraging and pushing to go further into the way we really live. And it’s all there in ‘Sorry Mom’: chasing dreams, walking away from school, losing my virginity, walking away from college.
“But the best part of the song is – in the fullness of time – I can appreciate how she felt about all of it, I can understand why. We can both look back on those times, knowing it was part of the journey, and it’s part of a lot of people’s journeys… But when you look at everything that happened, it turned out pretty well. To me, that’s what you can’t know ‘til you’re here.”
With the acoustic guitar out front opening, the midtempo ballad is more than a fistful of details of one artist’s coming into her own; by the time the band kicks in, the creamy California pop rising and the harmonies roll in, Ballerini offers a blessing for mothers, daughters, sons and even friends who offer the tough love but never stop loving the dreamer chasing a life they don’t understand.
“I love how our relationship evolves. My Mom didn’t understand, was even disappointed by some of it, but stood by me, holds me like gravity. When you recognise your own growth, priorities and being a woman she’s proud of? That’s a lot for a song to hold.”
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