Kelsea Ballerini still sees Taylor Swift as her “North Star”.
The 31-year-old country pop superstar has always looked up to the ‘Love Story’ hitmaker, 35, but she had to forge her own identity to “differentiate” herself – after being told “there’s already a Taylor Swift” by a music executive early in her career.
She recounted in an interview with Variety: “He looked at me and said, ‘Well, there’s already a Taylor Swift.’
“And he was right. There weren’t a lot of young female singer-songwriter girls in country music to look up to — Taylor was the North Star for me, and still is in a lot of ways. I had to grow into my own identity as an artist and a songwriter and learn to differentiate myself.”
The pair became friends after Taylor praised Kelsea’s song ‘Love Me Like You Mean It’, and the pair performed the song on Taylor’s ‘The 1989 World Tour’ stop in Nashville, Tennessee in 2015.
Sharing the best advice Taylor gave her, Kelsea previously told NBC’s ‘Sunday Today With Willie Geist’: “She was like, ‘You have to become undeniable. Whatever that means to you, whatever that looks like for you. Then no one can tell you no, because what is no? You just, you pivot. Pivot, you know?’”