Kelsea Ballerini Gets Real About ‘Entering My 30s’ on New Album Patterns: ‘I Used to Be a Big Ghoster’.

“Looking at myself in the mirror and my relational habits and patterns on this record is in the forefront,” the country star tells PEOPLE of her new album

Kelsea Ballerini in Beverly Hills in April 2024. Photo:  Gilbert Flores/Variety/Getty

The country superstar, 31, unleashed her fifth studio album Patterns on Friday, Oct. 25, and the 15-song collection features some of her most vulnerable songwriting to date as she unpacks moving on from a divorce and entering a new decade of life.

“I think this thing happens when you turn 30 where you kind of assess your life,” Ballerini — who says she feels “naked” on the album — tells PEOPLE exclusively. “And I came up for air and I was like, ‘Okay, all right, let’s take a little inventory here. What in my life right now do I love? What feels uncomfortable? What have I contributed to both of those things? What are my patterns? And then what do I want to work on and edit on myself? And then in my closest, most interpersonal relationships, what do I want to edit and challenge and celebrate also?’”

Adds Ballerini: “That’s, really, thematically the whole record. It’s just a deep dive in the self-assessment of entering my thirties.”

Ballerini also felt more clarity after weathering her Saturn return.

“Mine kicked my ass,” she says, “and I feel like now coming out on the other side of it, I’m like, ‘Oh, doesn’t mean that things are glossy and perfect, but I definitely have a better grasp on my life now.’ “

The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter had plenty of moments of self-discovery as she worked on the album. For example, “I used to be a big-time ghoster,” she says.

“Looking at myself in the mirror and my relational habits and patterns on this record is in the forefront,” Ballerini explains. “One thing I’ve realized about myself is in any relationship in my life, with my career, with my friends, obviously with a partner, as soon as something feels scary, like it could go wrong, my habit and my unhealthy pattern is to just be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to jump ship. So I hurt myself and they don’t hurt me.’ “

But she’s in a healthier place today having confronted that trait.

“I’ve realized that that really doesn’t serve me, and sometimes the best thing that can happen for a friendship or a relationship or an opportunity is to have the hard conversations and work through a turmoil moment,” Ballerini adds. “When you come out on the other side of that, there’s so much beauty in that, and there’s so much mutual respect of that fight for each other. And I think that’s, in my personal life, a thing that I’m really proud of finally tackling.”

Chase Stokes and Kelsea Ballerini in New York City in April 2023.Bruce Glikas/Getty

In August 2022, Ballerini filed for divorce from fellow musician Morgan Evans, 39, after nearly five years of marriage. Fallout from that split fueled her acclaimed 2023 EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat — now, Patterns, in part, is inspired by how she’s moved on since: She began dating Outer Banks actor Chase Stokes, 32, in January last year.

“I think it took me a second after Welcome Mat to get my bearings and come up for air and really figure out what about that really connected like it did, and then how do I translate that into a record in a very different part of my life,” Ballerini says. “And honestly, I think I really had to give myself some grace to live my life, live a life to write about and take my time. I think for me, I’m so goal-oriented and I like to just make sure that I’m always putting things out and doing things and forward motion and all that, and I just let myself have space to make this in the time that it needed to happen.”

Kelsea Ballerini’s ‘Patterns’ album art.2024 Black River Entertainment

When it came time to begin working on the project that would become Patterns, Ballerini trusted a close circle of female songwriters to work with.

“It really started taking shape when I took my first writing retreat and I did it with four other women that I love that are just pillars in the music industry and certainly in Nashville, and they’re my friends,” she says. “I didn’t know where to start, so I was like, ‘Hey, you’re my friends. You’re so safe. Can we just go away for a couple days, throw paint at the wall, and just see if we can find a home base here?’ And we wrote ‘Two Things,’ Baggage’ and, ‘Sorry Mom’ that first retreat. And I was like, ‘I feel like whatever this little kind of core is, that’s what I want to expand on,’ so that’s when I felt confident enough to really dive in with those women and make the record.”

Ballerini will celebrate the release with a sold-out album launch concert at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 29, before kicking off her first-ever headlining arena tour in January.

Patterns is out now.