Kelsea Ballerini has denied throwing shade at Halsey in her new track ‘Doin’ My Best’.

The song features the lyrics, “I was friends with a pop star / I put ’em on track four, but / Wish I could take it back, I woulda never asked / If I knew we wouldn’t talk anymore.”

Fans quickly drew assumptions that Ballerini was referring to Halsey, who she collaborated with on The Other Girl from her 2020 album Kelsea. However, the country singer clarified that the lyrics weren’t intended as “shade”.

“I hope people interpret that line like it was meant to be, which is no shade at all,” she said during an appearance on Amazon Music’s Country Heat Weekly last week. “It’s just saying that one of the things I’ve had to navigate is naturally you want to become friends with other artists because no one is going to get your life like another artist does. And then, sometimes, that becomes really awkward and sometimes there’s competition involved.”

She continued, “Sometimes you try to do something together, ’cause they’re your friend and you want to share art together. And then you introduce business into it, and it just messes everything up. That was what I was trying to say.”

Ballerini recently announced her separation from husband Morgan Evans and appeared to address the break-up at a live performance.

While performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, Ballerini changed the lyrics to her recently released single What I Have from “I got a warm body in bed” to “I got my own body in bed.” In Get Over Yourself, she also sang, “I’m the crazy bitch that wrecked your life” in place of, “I’m the crazy ex that wrecked your life.”

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Evans and Ballerini first met in 2016 while co-hosting Australia’s Country Music Channel Award. They got married in December 2017 at an intimate beach ceremony in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

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