Kelsea Ballerini Clears Up Those Halsey Feud Rumors
The pop stars had a falling out in 2022.
Kelsea Ballerini is ready to put a three-year old feud to bed. Back in 2022, the country pop singer shocked fans when she not-so-subtly revealed she was no longer speaking with her former friend and collaborator, Halsey. But things don’t seem to be so dire between the two anymore.
The whole drama began when Ballerini released her 2022 album Subject to Change. On the confessional track “Doin’ My Best,” Ballerini got extremely personal about tough moments in her life, including couple’s therapy, social media backlash, and fleeting friendships. The lines that stuck out the most to listeners in the know detailed a falling out with a popular singer Ballerini once considered a friend:
I was friends with a pop star / I put 'em on track four, but / Wish I could take it back, I would've nevеr asked / If I knew we wouldn't talk anymore
Though Ballerini never officially revealed who inspired the verse, it felt like a pretty obvious reference to Halsey. Ballerini featured Halsey on “The Other Girl,” the fourth track of her 2020 album Kelsea (it is her only “track four” with a featured artist).
But whatever rift there may have been seems to be long gone now. On May 14, Ballerini posted a video from the crowd at Halsey’s Hollywood Bowl concert, captioning a clip of the singer performing “Bad at Love” with the declaration: “Forever a [Halsey] stan.”
The heartwarming update comes after Ballerini opened up about why she penned the “cringey” lyrics after “Doin’ My Best” was released in 2022.
“I’m a human, and life is messy, and there’s some things that I wanted to take ownership for,” she told Consequence at the time. “It’s a little embarrassing and a little cringey, but that’s my human experience.”
“It is not meant to be a shady lyric,” Kelsea during a September 2022 podcast appearance. “The whole idea of that song ... it's the idea of taking ownership of my cringe. I wanted to acknowledge all of the things that people have watched happen in my life and just go, ‘Yep. Here's the messiness. I'm owning it, I'm doing my best.’”
