Photo: Getty Images
Kelsea Ballerini opened up about feeling far “from the things that I want” — particularly, a family — in the vulnerable ballad she released on Friday (November 7).
Ballerini, 32, debuted “I Sit In Parks,” the first track on a six-song collection that’s set to release next week. The East Tennessee-born singer-songwriter opens the reflective ballad: “I sit in parks/ It breaks my heart ‘cause I see just how far I am/ From the things that I want.”
She goes on to create a visual of a family gathered in the park. The father packed a picnic, the mother packed sunscreen, and two children play on the swings as she notes the contrast between their lives and her own. In the second verse, she notices how much “he loves her,” and wonders “if she wants my freedom like I want to be a mother,” the lyrics state. Ballerini wonders in the chorus, “Did I miss it? By now is it a lucid dream? Is it my fault for chasing things a body clock doesn’t wait for? …I wonder if I missed the mark, so I sit in parks.”
“I Sit In Parks” is the first track to arrive from Mount Pleasant, a 6-track EP that’s set to arrive this month, Ballerini confirmed on Thursday (November 6). The collection will also include “People Pleaser,” “Emerald City,” “587,” “The Revisionist” and “Check On Your Friends.” Some commenters noted that Mount Pleasant is a town in South Carolina, and a filming location of Outer Banks, which stars Ballerini’s ex-boyfriend, Chase Stokes. News broke of the couple’s split in September — shortly after Ballerini’s birthday — after more than two years of dating. Neither Ballerini nor Stokes have publicly addressed the breakup.
“I have always made records – whether songs, EPs or albums – to capture a moment in time,” the 2026 Grammy nominee said in a statement. She wrote the EP throughout the summer to mark “a chapter of heavy self-examination, longing, and stepping further into who I am as a 32-year old woman.”
Ballerini’s latest full studio record is Patterns, which she extended into a 20-track deluxe album in March 2025. Last month, she released a project with stripped versions of seven Patterns tracks: “Baggage,” “Patterns,” “We Broke Up,” “To The Men That Love Women After Heartbreak,” “Sorry Mom,” Hindsight Is Happiness,” and “I Would, Would You.” Mount Pleasant will release on November 14 (and some fans have pointed out that the final lyric in “I Sit In Parks” is “the album’s due in March,” though Ballerini has not made an official album announcement as of publication time).
Ballerini wrote in an Instagram caption on Friday that “the ending of this video is one of my favorite visual metaphors I’ve gotten to tell in my career. I hope it makes you feel something, we felt so much making it.”