Kelsea Ballerini
“Penthouse”
Kelsea Ballerini bares her heart on her new ballad, “Penthouse.” The plaintive ballad finds the newly-divorced singer reflecting on the quality of her past marriage and the facade they put up. Lyrically, it harkens back to the sentiment of Tammy Wynette‘s “I Don’t Wanna Play House.”
In that 1967 hit, Wynette recounts her daughter’s words in the chorus, “I don’t wanna play house / It makes my mommy cry / ‘Cause when she played house / My daddy said good-bye.” Here, Ballerini is the one who’s “played house” for far too long, and she’s reeling from that ache.
“We played the part five nights, but we were never there on the weekends, baby / We got along real nice, but when I left town, did you hate me? / One day, the curtain started coming down / I changed the second we were moving out / I guess wrong can look alright / When you’re playing home in a penthouse, baby,” she sings with unfiltered honesty over a piano-driven melody.
“Penthouse” is off Ballerini’s latest surprise post-divorce EP, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. — Jeremy Chua