‘I Sit in Parks’ by Kelsea Ballerini - Lyrics & Meaning

Arriving as a bolt-from-the-blue in November 2025, Ballerini's ‘I Sit in Parks’ serves as the first taste of her post-PATTERNS era of music. The mellow, introspective offering kicks off the ‘HEARTFIRST’ hitmaker's subsequent Mount Pleasant EP.

It continues the vulnerability and candour that permeated both PATTERNS and Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, Ballerini getting honest about her mental health, as she assesses how her current season of life compares to how she imagined it would be.

The release was accompanied by an official music video bringing the story to life, with Ballerini seemingly spending time in a park, before the camera pans out at the end to reveal she's been in a studio swinging against a fake backdrop all along. This arguably symbolises the key contrast of ‘I Sit in Parks’, between Ballerini's music career - which she perhaps views as smoke and mirrors - and the ‘real’ life she craves.

‘I Sit in Parks’ finds Ballerini doubling down on the hazy, atmospheric composition style she's been leaning towards of late, with the Knoxville native's sleek, enchanting vocals drifting dreamily across the layered, acoustic guitar-driven backing.

The hook is subtly infectious, with Ballerini once again showcasing her ear for a killer chorus on this track. Despite the existential turmoil and tumult our protagonist finds herself in, there's a quiet sense of peace and ease pervading ‘I Sit in Parks’.

“I sit in parks, it breaks my heart, 'cause I see
Just how far I am from the things that I want
Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought the sunscreen
Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings”

‘I Sit in Parks’ opens in media res, with Ballerini looking forlornly at a happy mother, father and child enjoying the sunshine, hinting at her yearning to start her own family.

Inevitably, given the fact that Ballerini and Outer Banks star, Chase Stokes, broke up a couple of months before the arrival of ‘I Sit in Parks’, fans have been scouring the lyrics for any kind of reference to the split. However, the final line - “the album's due in March” - implies this was penned before the break-up. The ‘half of my hometown’ singer-songwriter dropped her latest album, PATTERNS in March 2025.

“We look about the same age
But we don't have the same Saturdays”

Here, Ballerini underlines how she is around the same age as her partner, before creates a juxtaposition between the disparate ways they like to spend their Saturdays.

“Did I miss it? By now, is it
A lucid dream? Is it my fault
For chasing things a body clock
Doesn't wait for? I did the damn tour
It's what I wanted, what I got
I spun around and then I stopped
And wonder if I missed the mark”

Here, the protagonist wonders if she's missed the opportunity to have children. She references striving for accomplishments and objectives that didn't necessarily align with her “body clock”, implying she feels she has to choose between giving her all to her career or to having children. Ballerini powerfully captures the back-and-forth and the mixed emotions she has about this, because she's proud of everything she has achieved, but still wonders how her life would look if she'd opted for the path that ends up with her and her family laughing in a park.

“So, I sit in parks, sunglasses dark, and I
Hit the vape, hallucinate a nursery with Noah's Ark
They lay on a blanket, and God damn it, he loves her
I wonder if she wants my freedom, like I wanna be a mother”

Ballerini stays out of sight as she observes the family, before wondering whether the mother longs for her freedom, in the same way that she wishes to be in her shoes.

“But Rolling Stone says I'm on the right road
So I refill my Lexapro, thinking”

Ballerini again conveys how she feels torn, because Rolling Stone is praising her artistry and championing her work, while she worries that she has made a wrong turn.

She describes getting a fresh supply of Lexapro - the brand name for the antidepressant, escitalopram - suggesting that she's been struggling with her mental health. It's always refreshing to see artists and public figures normalising looking after our mental wellbeing, even when everything seems fine from the outside.

“So, I sit in parks checking benchmarks
Tarryn's due in June, the album's due in March”

Ballerini concludes by giving an indication as to when ‘I Sit in Parks’ was written. She references her friend and makeup and hair artist, Tarryn Feldman, who had a baby this summer, before contrasting this with how her own ‘baby’ and album, PATTERNS, dropped in March. It's another striking juxtaposition that captures how Ballerini is tussling with the conflicting pull of motherhood and her career.

In tandem with the arrival of ‘I Sit in Parks’, Ballerini took to socials to hint as to the core vibe underpinning the EP, “welcome to the park, where daydreaming and crash outs, “what a life” and “what now?”, wandering and wondering…are all at play”.

“I sit in parks, it breaks my heart, 'cause I see
Just how far I am from the things that I want
Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought the sunscreen
Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings

We look about the same age
But we don't have the same Saturdays

Did I miss it? By now, is it
A lucid dream? Is it my fault
For chasing things a body clock
Doesn't wait for? I did the damn tour
It's what I wanted, what I got
I spun around and then I stopped
And wonder if I missed the mark

So, I sit in parks, sunglasses dark, and I
Hit the vape, hallucinate a nursery with Noah's Ark
They lay on a blanket, and God damn it, he loves her
I wonder if she wants my freedom, like I wanna be a mother

But Rolling Stones says I'm on the right road
So I refill my Lexapro, thinking

Did I miss it? By now, is it
A lucid dream? Is it my fault
For chasing things a body clock
Doesn't wait for? I did the damn tour
It's what I wanted, what I got
I spun around and then I stopped
And wonder if I missed the mark

So, I sit in parks checking benchmarks
Tarryn's due in June, the album's due in March”

For more on Kelsea Ballerini, see below:

Kelsea Ballerini

Artist