Kelsea Ballerini on Hosting the CMT Music Awards for One Final Time

Kelsea Ballerini has been the hostess with the mostest, as far as the CMT Music Awards, but it will soon be time to slap an “emeritus” on that. She hosts the awards show, now seen on CBS, tonight for a fourth and last time. Ballerini is revealing she will be relinquishing the role after handling emcee duties since 2021; Kane Brown was her partner in co-hosting previous telecasts, leading up to her solo reign over the ceremony this time.

Sitting in her dressing room backstage at Austin’s Moody Center the day before the telecast, she was anything but moody in discussing why she’s enjoyed the CMTs ride so far, but why she’ll also enjoy delving further into other opportunities she’s hoping to focus on more in the time to come.

“It’s my final year, yeah,” Ballerini confirms. “I’ve hosted or co-hosted this show for four years now, and I’ve gotten to host a lot of different kinds of ventures over the last decade — and I really enjoy it. It was the first thing that I did outside of music really, that allowed me to ask myself the question: What else? Like, what else can I do? And I’m ready to ask myself that question again, and I really want to give myself the space to see what else there is. Never say never — I will never say that I won’t come do this again. I love it. I just am excited to see what else I can do.”

It’s not any secret that Ballerini has her eyes set on other media; she discussed it in a previous interview with Variety… for an article otherwise focused on her renewing her record deal, indicating that she’s definitely not dropping everything to explore new avenues. So when it comes to what else might be ahead, for now, she says, “I’m really creatively fulfilled by the idea of finding a way to get involved with newer artists and find a way to creatively collaborate. And I’m really excited about the idea of doing some stuff in film and TV and just pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. Music is always gonna be my baby and my focus and the thing that I protect the most, but in the space around it, I want tio keep growing and I want to keep challenging myself.”

Going it solo at the helm isn’t at all daunting. “I love Kane and I miss him this year, but I feel like I’ve gotten enough experience under my belt where I feel equipped — yeah, I’ll take the job.” With one asterisk to that confidence. “I wear a lot of very large heels, and now I don’t have a friendly arm next to me to help me not trip. So that’s terrifying.”

Ballerini has a new album-in-progress, to follow up her Grammy-nominated “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat” project. But before she starts teasing that, the singer has just released a between-albums one-off — a newly rearranged version of her breakout hit “Love Me Like You Mean It,” which she considers “just a little thank-you” to the fans who’ve been with her for 10 years. That’s the song she’ll be seen doing on the CMTs, pre-taped in front of a crowd at the tower at UT Austin.

“I stand by the song and the sentiment so much, still,” she avows. “The heart of ‘Love Me Like You Mean It’ is that we accept the love that we think we deserve, and encouraging each other to hold ourselves accountable to accept good love. And me as a 30-year-old feels the same way, but has a lot of life since I wrote that song at 19. So I was like, how would 30-year-old me sing this? And that was a really fun discovery. To me it was like the ending of a decade of music together, and and then a continuation of ‘Welcome Mat’ and sonically kind of a hint as to what’s next.”

Her role in the show aside, Ballerini has picks for what she thinks telecast highlights might be.

“In my opinion, the performance of the night’s gonna be Little Big Town and Sugarland, that they already have such a synergy and a history together,” she says. Although the identity of the song the two acts are doing together isn’t being revealed prior to showtime, “I’ve heard the song, because Karen (Fairchild) is just a dear sister to me,” she says. “And I remember when I heard ‘Life in a Northern Town when they did it together years ago” — on the CMT Awards in 2008, the last time those two groups collaborated on a performance — “and it just brings me right back to that, and I think it’s gonna be a moment.”

She’s also high on a brand new artist, Dasha, who’ll be making the transition from TikTok star to prime time television for the first time with a performance of “Austin.”

“I mean, we have Trisha (Yearwood) and we have Keith (Urban) holding it down, as pillar, household-name country artists that people have tuned into these shows for for years and years to see. And then the range goes all the way to Dasha, who is blowing up on TikTok. I called Jason (Owen), my manager, about a month ago, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if all the performance spots are booked or not, but if not, can we get her on the show’ She has the song called “Austin”’” — as in, perfectly coincidentally, the host city — “and it’s perfect. I think we need her, and I’m so happy she’s on the show now. And it’s her first awards show performance and her first performance in an arena, so it’s a big deal.”

Dasha was, in fact, leaving Ballerini’s dressing room just minutes ago, after previously telling Variety how much she looked forward to possibly hanging with Ballerini. The host finds herself now in that hopefully sweet spot where she’s looked up to as a veteran by some of the youngest female artists coming up, but is still a veritable kid to much of the industry that’s kept her as a star for 10 years — a middle ground she’s happy to inhabit right now, however hard it is to fully realize from the inside out.

“That makes me smile,” she says, when told how many young women with debut albums mention her as an influence or someone they hope to meet. “I’m always in conversation with myself on finding the right line of still thinking I’m a new artist, and then also honoring the decade that I’ve had and not discrediting the success I’ve had. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my career kind of with my shoulders a little bit hunched in, and I’m really trying to stand tall in this last decade of work and be proud of myself and show up for that, while also knowing that I still have a long way to go and I always wanna push myself and keep growing. So it’s really fun to be able to be friends with and in the same room and situations as my heroes, but then also being meeting the newer artists that I still really identify with, a lot of the time.”

Of her previous three stints hosting or co-hosting the CMTs, last year was her favorite. “I was proud of the show as a whole, and I was proud of what I was able to bring to the show,” she says of 2023’s show— including a musical performance from her that included a phalanx of drag queens, right as Tennessee legislators were enacting anti-drag legislation, plus an opening statement addressing gun violence in the wake of a Nashville mass school shooting. “As far as my opening statement, my performance hosting with Kane, being in a new city, I feel like we really did bring a new breath of life to the show that was really fun to watch happen in real time. So I think that, for me, is the bar.”

Definitely not the high point, but something she is able to look back on with some affection, was the year 2022, when she was scheduled to co-host in person with Anthony Mackie but shifted to virtual co-host when she tested positive for COVID, despite feeling fine. Brown stepped in to assume some of the duties she would have had at the host arena in Nashville, while Ballerini did live remotes from the socially distanced comfort of home.

“I laugh at it now, and I’m really proud of the pivot that we ended up being able to do,” Ballerini says. “It would’ve been really easy for them to be like, ‘OK, we’re gonna just fill your spot,’ and they didn’t. They put a satellite truck outside of my house with all the equipment that it was easy for me to figure out and to still be a part of it. It was very much a bookmark of that time, which was pivoting and figuring things out as it was happening to us. It definitely wasn’t ideal, but we pulled it off, and I got to end the night in my sweatpants, so it was a win.”

She’s highly approving of the CMTs being in Austin for a second year, as both this show and the ACMs have shifted to a Texas base, for the sake of shaking things up but also with no small help from financial incentives. “You know, I am Team Evolve. I’m Team Try Something New — see how it works, see if it’s right,” she says. “I just think especially as a genre, being able to put ourselves in new places and try new things, that’s how we evolve. And to be here, whether it’s for just two years or the next 20, I think it was an awesome, healthy change.”

This year, “I do know going into these moments that I love having fun with the fashion and the looks and all that stuff, and I really pride myself on not taking myself too damn seriously. And I think especially with this show, and really with the script this year in particular, I get to lean into that more and just kind of be who I am.” Which is… “Really, I’m a goofy girl, and I like being able to be that alongside being a credible artist. Two things can live in the same space.”

Some have wondered about the tone of her next album, since she pivoted from making the mostly upbeat — and, yes, sometimes goofy — “Subject to Change” in 2022 right into “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat” in 2023. That EP (later expanded to album lengthin a deluxe edition) was her “divorce record,” completely holistic as a thematic look into dark developments in her personal life. If anyone following the country world had failed to give her credit as a cred artist in the past, “Welcome Mat” disabused them of those doubts, and racked up the kind of album of the year nominations at awards shows (including the Grammys) that had sometimes eluded her when she was producing more effusive material. But speaking of Team Evolve, will the next album project be a pivot back to more obviously mainstream fare, or…?

“Well, I think that’s kind of like what I was saying earlier: two things can be true. Like, I am a deeply emotional and committed songwriter. That is my absolute truth. It is the love of my life; it is my craft. And even in this new season of life, I’m really being diligent about making a record that has that same level of songwriting and honesty and intention as ‘Welcome Mat’ in depth. In the same breath, I’m a 30-year-old girl that really is enjoying my life, and I’m in a different phase of my life now that is filled with a lot more light and joy. And I love being able to celebrate that, and there’s space for both.”

But you won’t see much of the “Welcome Mat” side of her on the CMTs. For the bigger audience that now watches the show live on CBS and Paramount+ (and, after a few days, its namesake, CMT, too), she will be rolling out a true welcome mat, one that’s closer to comedic in tone.

“You know, I’m gonna be doing a little ‘Barbie’ bit. I’m gonna be doing a little impromptu collab. And I’m gonna be making fun of myself at the top of the show. Because I just like to beat people to the punch, and I am going to be probably losing (as a nominee)… but looking good and doing it well.”