It’s one thing to have the music world tout you as a potential successor to Taylor Swift’s Queen of Country crown, but Kelsea Ballerini also appears to have the blessing of Tay herself.

Driving around with the @KelseaBallerini EP on repeat.. SO lovely:) #yeahboy#lovemelikeyoumeanit
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) March 9, 2015

In March, she experienced an instant spike of interest when, out of the blue, Swift tweeted how much she was digging Ballerini’s self-titled EP. Since then, the 21-year-old from Knoxville, Tenn., has been getting a taste of the high life herself. Her catchy current smash “Love Me Like You Mean It” is dominating country radio, while her debut album “The First Time” (released in May) also crashed the Top Ten in Billboard’s Country Album chart.
At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before she crosses over into the mainstream, so here are five things you should know about Kelsea Ballerini.

https://instagram.com/p/1GgWzSjvK7/?taken-by=taylorswift
 
Following her tweet about Ballerini’s EP, Swift reached out to the up-and-comer, inviting her to a birthday party for Swift’s friend Abigail Lauren Anderson. “That was the first time I hung out with Taylor,” Ballerini tells The Post. “She’s awesome. We spent a lot of time in the photo booth and, at one point, me, Taylor and Hayley Williams from Paramore were having our own little dance party.”

At the age of 12, Ballernini learned to deal with life changes through creating music. “I got tall, boys got cute, and my parents got divorced,” she says. “It’s a subject that’s usually off limits for me because I don’t want to go there emotionally. I’ve only written one song about my parents’ divorce. It’s called ‘Secondhand Smoke’ and it’s on my album.”

Ballerini’s current single “Love Me Like You Mean It” contains the pointed lyrics “I’ve had my share of liars, losers and users,” and it turns out, she’s not kidding. “One time, a guy took me to a restaurant, sat me down, said ‘I’ll be back in a second.’ Then he never came back. He turned up at my door three hours later with flowers and said, ‘Sorry, I got caught up.’ I was like, ‘You got caught up, where? For three hours?!’ It was so bad, but it was just casual to him.”

Last month, Ballerini appeared on the reality TV show about South Carolina socialites, and caused a stir when she bid $5,001 for a date with bachelor Craig Conover at an auction. But there are no wedding bells or even Taco Bells in the near future, because the date never happened. “That was a spur of the moment thing,” she says, a little embarrassed, adding that it was her publicist who spurred her on. “In the end, I gifted the ‘date’ to a radio station to give away as a prize.” Reality TV isn’t really real? Who would have guessed?

Before moving to Nashville as a 15-year-old (a la Swift), Ballerini had visited several times to meet with music executives in a bid to get her songs noticed. “It became clear that I was trying to write what was already on the radio,” she says. “I learned early on that you have to do something that’s original and be yourself.”