Kelsea Ballerini

Growing up, I remember thinking country music was all honky-tonks and beer and trucks - Britney Spears was my first concert.

Growing up in east Tennessee gave me my country roots, my twang, and a lot of my stories.

When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and journals, but that's when it switched for me to songwriting. That's when I wanted to do everything. It was like a fire all of a sudden. I started coming to Nashville and moved here when I was 15.

In my opinion, it's all about the song and the performance, not the gender.

With Rascal Flatts, I'm such a fan of them, and I feel like they've been so gracefully relevant through decades of country music.

I was this little blond girl with a guitar case bigger than me - it was pink and sparkly at the time. But I always took myself seriously, and I think that people took that seriously. I would tell them about my goal list, and they listened. I was like, 'I want to be the one that swings the pendulum.'

As a young girl, there are pressures that come with any career, but I decided when I got into this I didn't want to be perfect.

I was raised on a farm in East Tennessee, and my first concert was Britney Spears. It's my job as a country music artist to be honest about that.

My first artist bus was Jason Aldean's old bus, with deer antlers over the lights and cowhide on the back of the couches. It was such an absolute dude bus.

I've always been drawn to strong women in every genre, people who push the boundaries because they're just epic.

You really do have to be different. You really do have to set yourself apart.

I wanted to be the girl that talks about getting a guy. I felt like that was a different approach to writing.