Kelsea Ballerini Performs ‘Dibs’ & ‘Love Me Like You Mean It’ in Billboard Studio: Exclusive Video

Kelsea Ballerini: The Billboard Shoot

Ballerini quickly made her mark with a No. 1 debut on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart with “Love Me Like You Mean It,” making her the first female country solo act to do so since Carrie Underwood in 2006. The song held steady on the chart for 38 weeks, ensuring that the comparisons this young star gets to country acts like Underwood, and even pal Taylor Swift at the beginning of her career, are perfectly warranted.

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Does Ballerini get tired of the Swift comparisons? During an interview with Billboard in July, the “Dibs” singer had an honest response.

“Uh, no!’” she told Billboard. “If there’s anyone’s career I could have a sliver of similarity to, it’s hers.”

Despite the comparisons to female starlets that came before her, however, Ballerini is on her way to becoming a unique star in her own right.

“I was this little blond girl with a guitar case bigger than me — it was pink and sparkly at the time,” Ballerini told Billboard. “But I always took myself seriously, and I think that people took that seriously. I would tell them about my goal list, and they listened. I was like, ‘I want to be the one that swings the pendulum.’”

Kelsea Ballerini on Busting Up Nashville’s Boys Club: ‘I Want to Be the One Who Swings the Pendulum’

Ballerini recently visited Billboard to perform two of her songs live in our studios. Watch her perform “Love Me Like You Mean It” and “Dibs” below:

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