Kelsea Ballerini is less than two years into her 30s, but she’s already feeling more settled than she did in her 20s — and she has zero interest in reliving her younger days.
“I love my thirties so much,” Ballerini, 31, exclusively told *Us Weekly* on Tuesday, July 15, while discussing her role as a Pantene Healthy Hair Ambassador. “Could not pay me to go back to my twenties — literally kill me.”
But while she doesn’t want to turn back time, she knows she learned a lot of important lessons when she was younger. As she gets older, she’s still learning and finding ways to incorporate her newfound knowledge into her music.
“Just growing up into that womanhood, there’s a lot of beautiful things that come with that,” she explained. “But then also moments that you’re like, ‘Oh, OK, I haven’t had to think about this before. What about this and how does this feel?’ So I think I’m just kind of writing. I’ve always written about my life, so I think I’m just writing about that phase of it.”
Last year, Ballerini released her fifth album, *Patterns*, which she feels is the perfect reflection of how her work has changed as she’s come into her own.
“I really think I dug my heels into — I’ve said this a lot — but not rounding the edges on my songwriting and really being specific,” she told *Us*, noting that the thing that excites her the most about her latest chapter is being ready to explore. “I am so open. I’ve never been this open in my life, truly to anything, to whatever the new record is going to sound like or who I make it with or whatever. If there’s another creative outlet or role or anything that comes my way, yes to anything — to a random trip, like, yes, I’m just open. I just want to exist in that openness. I’m in my yes era.”
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Part of that openness includes the possibility of trying her hand at acting again. Ballerini made her debut last year on an episode of *Doctor Odyssey*, ABC’s medical drama about a luxury cruise ship. That show has since been canceled, but the “Sorry Mom” singer says she’s willing to give show business another shot.
“I’m open. It was so much fun and I really wanted to do it for the longest time,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m not going to try acting.’ I was so scared of sucking and failing on camera. How embarrassing is that? So I was like, ‘I feel like I should run towards the things that scare me.’ And I tried it and I really enjoyed it. So I think if there’s the right thing, the right story to tell, and if I was the right person to tell the story, why the heck not?”
For now, Ballerini’s acting roles stop at her work in Pantene’s “Fixins for Country Fried Hair” campaign, but her enthusiasm for the brand’s products are anything but fake.
“I love the repair oil so much,” she told *Us*. “I’ll do it slicked back in a bun, go to dinner, sleep in it and then shower the next day, and it helps my hair feel so good. If I’m going to just curl it and style it for a couple days, it kind of gives it that shine and that glow that I like. So that’s my hero product for the summer especially. It’s so humid, I feel like it kind of counteracts it a little bit.”
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As fans know, Ballerini is a huge proponent of protecting her hair. Earlier this year, she revealed that she was actually wearing a wig throughout her most recent tour, in part so she didn’t have to worry so much about damaging her own hair.
“Honestly, it was fun. I felt like Hannah Montana, and that’s every girl’s dream,” she told *Us* on Tuesday. “But it was nice because every night I would use this regenerative hair oil and we would just douse my hair, wig on, go out there, do the show, wig off, and then I would sleep in it. I always felt like I was protecting my hair, and it also smelled really good. It was kind of like the best of both worlds. Pun intended.”