“Love you Pook … No. Matter. What.”
Carla Denham typed that under her daughter’s Instagram post in August 2024. Her daughter is Kelsea Ballerini, and the post was the first taste of a new song called “Sorry Mom.” Holler reported that the teaser used home footage of the two of them together. Kelsea wrote back to her mother, “now we both sleep good at night.”
It’s a good week to go back to that song. Kelsea sang on last year’s CMA Awards, and this year’s show airs Wednesday, Nov. 18 on ABC with Lainey Wilson hosting.
If you mostly know her from the radio, Kelsea is the East Tennessee singer behind “Peter Pan” and “Half of My Hometown,” her duet with Kenny Chesney. “Sorry Mom” came out on Aug. 9, 2024, ahead of her fifth album, “Patterns.” She wrote it with Hillary Lindsey, Jessie Jo Dillon, Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town and Alysa Vanderheym.
TODAY described the song as Kelsea saying sorry for things she had done that might have embarrassed her mom. On Instagram, Kelsea called it “a love letter to the growth of mother and daughter to woman and woman.”
She explained it twice on the same weekend that October.
On NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” host Ayesha Rascoe asked what moved her to say sorry now, while she still could. “I’ve always had a really beautiful relationship with my mom. I’m lucky in that way,” Kelsea said. Then she added something you might not expect from a song with that title. “The heart of the song isn’t even necessarily about apologizing.”
On TODAY’s “Sunday Sitdown,” she told Willie Geist how closely Carla used to watch over her. “Like, she was a helicopter mom growing up,” she said. The song, she explained, was her way of telling her mother, “I know that you probably wanted to shield me from a couple of the choices that I’ve made in my life.”
She finished the thought this way: “But at the end of the day I’m safe and I’m happy and you love me and I love you.”
So how did Carla take it?
Kelsea gave Willie Geist the answer. “She got done listening to it, and she said, ‘She has nothing to be sorry for,’ which I think is very sweet.”
She told NPR about the same first listen, and the wording came out a little differently. “She loves it. You know, her first reaction, she listened to it and said, Honey, you have nothing to apologize for.” Kelsea called that reply “an unexpected pillar moment” for the two of them.
The words change a little between the two interviews. The message from Carla is the same in both.
TODAY posted a cut of the Willie Geist interview that runs about eight and a half minutes. It covers the album and a lot more besides.
Kelsea talks with Willie Geist on Sunday TODAY
The song itself is on Kelsea’s own channel.
The official video for “Sorry Mom”
Carla has stayed close to the action since then. When Kelsea was a coach on season 27 of “The Voice,” her mother came to watch the Battle rounds. NBC Insider reported that Kelsea warned the other coaches first, “My mom’s almost here, so make me look good,” and then walked her over to John Legend. “John, this is my mom!”
Around that time, Kelsea also told Adam Levine about the first song she ever wrote. She was about 11 and had forgotten Mother’s Day, so she made up a song for Carla instead of buying a gift.
“She cried, and I liked that,” Kelsea said.