“’Cowboys Cry Too’ is a verse and chorus that I started by myself on my back porch last November,” Kelsea Ballerini told Audacy of how the song originated. “I was just thinking about the pillar men in my life and how I'm really lucky that, they're just really emotionally open with me and I've really grown to appreciate the deep meaningful conversations about feelings and hard times and all of that that I've had with them, whether it be boyfriend, dad, friends, whatever. I wanted to write a song to honor them.”

The song is an extension of the “next level” songwriting Ballerini feels she found with her last project, Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, which earned her a GRAMMY nomination.

“’Cowboys Cry Too,' to me, is the perfect first song off of a new record, entering into a new chapter of music because I, really feel like I challenged my songwriting on Rolling up the Welcome Mat and I really wanted to make sure that I kept the integrity of what I found on that record on this one. ’Cowboys [Cry Too]’ to me was when I found what that could sound like in this new season of life that is much happier and different.”

Ballerini hopes the song will continue her trend of inspiring fans world-wide to feel their feels and validate that every emotion matters.

“I hope the fans when they hear this song, and I think for all my songs, I just wanna keep giving us all permission to feel our feelings and let all of them be valid,” she shared. “Whether they're happy and you want to go out and go to the club or if you wanna cry with your person, I wanna make sure that I'm making music to kind of help make sure that we all have a soundtrack to our life.”

Words by Monica Rivera