Kelsea Ballerini Recalls Nerves Before 1st Date With Chase Stokes In New Song ‘How Do I Do This’

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Kelsea Ballerini released the deluxe edition of her Rolling Up The Welcome Mat EP on Aug. 11, and it featured one brand new song that took her into the next chapter. The track, “How Do I Do This,” tells the story of moving on with someone new after a breakup. Kelsea divorced her husband, Morgan Evans, after more than five years in 2022, and the other songs on Rolling Up The Welcome Mat told her side of the story about the split. “How Do I Do This” moves into the next phase, where Kelsea starts something new with her now-boyfriend, Chase Stokes.

In the first verse, Kelsea immediately delves into her nerves about meeting up with Chase for the first time. “I haven’t been on a date since I was 22,” she sings. “My friend has a friend and they say they’re my type, and they’re texting me once, and then they’re texting me twice.” Kelsea previously revealed that she slid into Chase’s DMs after her manager “put the bug in [her] ear” because he lives in Charleston, which is where Chase films Outer Banks.

The end of verse one finds Kelsea agreeing to a date with the song’s subject, then diving into the chorus, where she second guesses herself. “Got a little black dress, I wanna use it, and maybe lose it on a floor that ain’t mine,” she sings. “I think it’s probably time to keep movin’, I talk a big game that I’m scared of losin’, everything I knew about love is ruined, it’s so confusing, so how do, how do I do this?”

In the second verse, Kelsea fears that her date will bring up the “elephant in the room,” which, of course, is her recent public breakup. Then, a second wave of anxiety arises as she wonders if he’ll “lean in” for a kiss at the end of the night and whether things will be “too good to be true.” The song ends with Kelsea calling up a friend for a pep talk, concluding, “Is it wrong to take a shot? I’m freaking out, like, oh my God, ’cause now it’s 7 on the dot.”

Kelsea and Chase first met at the end of 2022, and were publicly linked in January 2023. She confirmed that they were seeing each other when she appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast in February to support the original release of Rolling Up The Welcome Mat. In April, they made their red carpet debut as a couple at the CMT Awards.

In addition to “How Do I Do This,” Rolling Up The Welcome Mat (For Good) also features a live version of the song “Penthouse,” as well as the “Yeah, Sure, Okay” version of “Blindsided,” which Kelsea first performed on Saturday Night Live in March. Plus, the “Interlude” song now has a full length version, and seems to further address some of the issues in Kelsea’s relationship with Morgan.

“I wonder what we’ll say when we see each other ’round town,” she sings in the extended version. “We said we’d handle this the right way, I guess we’ve done each other wrong now.” She also gets savage as the song continues, adding, “I hope you sleep better at night now that you got an army of people that believe I’m the word you used to call me.” Of course, this has fans guessing what word Kelsea is referring to. Another lyric that captured fans’ attention is when Kelsea sings, “I told you mine, so when location died, what was your secret?” Here, she seems to be insinuating that Morgan started hiding his location from her, leading her to believe that something fishy might be going on.

Still, despite adding more fuel to the fire with these new lyrics, Kelsea has urged her fans not to come after her ex on social media. “From the deepest and purest part of my heart, I ask that you help this be ours and let the music simply be the music, not dig back into the experience that it was written about nearly a year ago,” she wrote on Instagram. “As a songwriter, producer and artist, I am proud and protective of this EP, and as a woman and human, also proud of the new, happy season of life I’m in.”