When Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton unexpectedly announced their split in July of 2015 after nearly 5 years of marriage, the yellow press was boiling over with speculations about the reasons why. So much, that Miranda Lambert still couldn't help but remark in an interview with health.com some 4 years later: "Well, if you could just spend some of that time talking about my actual art, that would be great!"
But it becomes one of the biggest burdens to carry, once you make it as a star: how to cope with the ever increasing lack of privacy. Especially in a genre like that of country music, where artists are presented as human and next door approachable. Today, both artists are married again (Blake Shelton with pop-star Gwen Stefani and Miranda Lambert with policeman Brendan McLoughlin) and nobody cares much about the reason for their breakup anymore.
Rightfully so! After all, nobody should be pressed to talk about personal issues like that in public, even if one has become part of public life. Unless one volunteers to do so (and does not make use of it for mudslinging). Artists then tend to apply their artistic skills when trying to process a deeply emotional and personal challenge, thereby presenting hints of it to the outside world.
Like Rosanne Cash (oldest daughter of Johnny Cash) and husband Rodney Crowell did at the beginning of the 1990s, when they released projects which dealt with their own separation. For Rosanne Cash "Interiors" (1990) became one the most important albums of her career (she received a Grammy Award for it), followed by "Wheels" (1993), which focussed more on the road ahead after the divorce. Rodney Crowell processed his side of their parting through an album with the indicative name "Life Is Messy" (1992).
When Kelsea Ballerini and
Morgan Evans announced their divorce in August of 2022, it was as unexpected as it was some 7 years before, when Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton did. Additional similarities by the way were that both couples came from the country music genre, had been married for some 5 years and that the split seems to have been initiated from the female side.
In September of 2022, Morgan Evans sat at a piano during a big live show in Australia and played the emotional new song 'Over For You'. The positive feedback of fans on social media had the label rush a release of the song as an official single (currently holding at number 51 on the radio chart). With song lyrics such as, "How many times did you say you loved me, when it wasn't true?", the song put pictures in the heads of its audience about what had gone wrong with the marriage. Regardless of the fact, that the song was not written by Morgan Evans alone, but rather conjointly with 3 other songwriters.
However true this picture may be, the world gets another perspective on the story on Valentines Day of 2023. Because that becomes the day Kelsea Ballerini releases a surprise project, which gives audiences an unexpected deep look into her emotions. It is a multimedia project, for which she engaged the help of songwriter and producer Alysa Vanderhey, in order to tell her side of the story.
The result of which is not only a 6-songs EP, but also a short film, whose 6 chapters are each represented by one of the songs. It is titled "Rolling Up the Welcome Mat"and stands for the closure of a chapter in life, represented by the welcome mat in front of their mutual former home.
While
Chris Willman of variety.com appears critical of the honest -and for him too blunt- insights on the marriage ("... an EP that’s otherwise too concerned with blunt storytelling to indulge much in anything as unnecessary as similes ..."), one has to pay respect to the artist for being unapologetically raw and vulnerable.
Working on the project may have been therapy for Kelsea Ballerini, yet it does not make one feel like a therapist, when listening to its outcome, but rather like a dear friend, to whom she is pouring her heart out to. Even though the words are addressed directly at her ex-husband, she is able to touchingly take the listener inside of her emotional experience throughout the past 5 years. Admittedly the focus is primarily on the lyrics and the simple, yet consistent visuals of the short film, so that the music itself falls to the background.
Chapter 1 is titled 'Mountain With A View' and actually starts near the end of the relationship. Here we find her talking to her husband on the phone, hoping he would take the last flight home. But soon the realization creeps in, that the marriage has become nothing more than a long distance relationsship, just like the house with a view has not turned into a home. Communication has become sparse and empty. It seems like it is geared more towards social media.
We say good morning, then goodnight,
I wonder if you even know where I am, where I am.
And the next moment she answers the question in Morgan Evans' song 'Over For You'.
Sometimes you forget yours, I think we're done tryin'
I realize you loved me much more at twenty-three
I think that this is when it's over for me.
I think that is when I set myself free.
One day you'll ask, when was it over for you?
Chapter 2 looks back at the beginning und talks about that hopeful wedding day on December 2, the beginning of a ferry tale, which soon starts dissolving evermore. Just like the word-play in the title, that turns the newly-wed (just married) into only-married (just married).
I wasn't strong enough to keep on with all of the weight that I carried.
Yeah, it was love,
Then it was just married.
Long distance texts, make-up-for-time sex,
tired of asking when I'll see you next.
I'm too mad to fight, so I starе and cry
at the picture of you and me wеaring white,
Just married.
In Chapter 3 the mutual Penthouse turns into a golden cage. A house that she purchased, in the hope of having all the cracks mend. Just to realize, that in the end he owns half of it. Eventually, after the seperation she buys a house that Kacey Musgraves had lived in for USD 2.5 mio. and which she and her husband had looked at before.
'Cause how does that even make sense?
Now that I think about it, it never did.
The very short interlude of Chapter 4 talks about the difficult issues a young woman in the publics eye and on the bring of a divorce has to face, once the news gets out there. In the short film she submerges in the water for a moment.
So, which side are you gonna take now?
'Cause people that I loved are just people that I knew once.
The rumors going 'round, but the truth is kinda nuanced.
and ain't it like this town to only criticize a woman?
I'm blowing up my life, but I'm standing by the crater,
I walk out on the stage, and go cry about it later.
Chapter 5 finally has the differences come merciless to the surface, pushing hard towards an inevitable separation. Like the fact, that she is not willing to start a family at this very point in her life and career, which is something he obvoiusly was wishing for. All the glamour seems gone, and yet amidst the blaming it feels more like disappointment about having lost each other along the way.
and that's lost on me,
years of sitting across from me in therapy.
I know the truth is hard to hear, but it wasn't hard to find!
Baby, were you blindsided or were you just blind?
we had to get drunk to ever really talk.
I told you what I needed, didn't have to rеad my mind!
So, were you blindsided or wеre you just blind?
Only Chapter 6 finds forgiving closure. Sonically an accoustic ballad, it is at the same time an attempt to come back to herself. While the word-play in the the track's title for a moment still toys with the question, who left who.
I hope you're writing songs that you love.
I hope you're feeling happier than you've ever been,
and I hope I never leave me again.
but then I outgrew it.
And staying only made me get real good at pretend.
So, I hope I never leave me again.
Kelsea Ballerini explains this bold project by saying: "The only way I’ve been able to handle my life since I was 12 was to write about it. Ironically, I started writing music because my parents got divorced; that was my therapy. 'Rolling Up The Welcome Mat' was how I processed everything. It’s the way I got my feelings out of my body and heart and put them to music, which is the purest way I could’ve handled it."
In the end, we need to take it at face value, and not try to catch a glimpse of the truth. After all this is not about discovering truth, but about art in music - and heartfelt moments that sure do feel like the truth.
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