Kelsea Ballerini scored a No. 1 hit with her first-ever single, and it's been mostly uphill from there ever since. The "Half of My Hometown" singer recently scored her first-ever No. 1 album on country radio with the release of Patterns. Recently, Ballerini stopped by the set of The Kelly Clarkson Show and reminisced about how the "Chemistry" singer inspired her teenage self.

Since winning the inaugural season of American Idol, Kelly Clarkson has built a reputation as one of the best singers in the business. Despite her enormous success, the "Behind These Hazel Eyes" hitmaker has always remained humble.

During a Monday (Nov. 4) appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Kelsea Ballerini recalled a time she witnessed that humility in person. The "Cowboys Cry Too" singer was "about 13 or 14" when she attended one of Clarkson's concerts in Knoxville, Tennessee.

"The air-conditioning in the arena was out. It was so hot. People were lining up to, like, put water on their face in the bathroom," Ballerini said. "You were sounding better than the record, and then you just stopped and you go, 'If any of you could smell me right now, none of you would be here.'"

She continued, "It was the first time I saw an artist onstage be a human. And that was like... I've always been drawn to that. And I was like, if I ever get to be on a stage, I want to be like that."

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Kelsea Ballerini surprised fans in 2023 by releasing her second EP, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. The six-song record, which chronicled her divorce from Australian country singer Morgan Evans, nabbed a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album and a CMA nod for Album of the Year.

"[It] connected differently than anything else I'd ever put out," Ballerini told Clarkson. "So, I put this immense pressure on myself to be like, 'Follow it up well.' And then I was like, 'How do I do this?'"

Her solution was to surround herself with women during the Patterns creation process. "We just wrote this whole record, but it was like -- it was womanhood," she said. "It was so grounded in that warmth."