Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan Drop Country Ballad 'Cowboys Cry Too': Listen

We have new music from Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan!

On Friday, June 28, the stars dropped their long-awaited collaboration — the country ballad “Cowboys Cry Too.” On the track, the artists bared it all, talking about emotional repression and stoic fathers, noting that it’s okay to spill one every now and then — “because cowboys cry too.”

Ballerini, 30, and Kahan, 27, sent fans reeling earlier this week when they first teased the track in a series of cryptic Instagram posts — including a message Ballerini allegedly handwrote to the folk-pop star, which read: ” Are you still a cowboy?”

In an interview with the Wayne D Show, Ballerini revealed that she first met Kahan at the 2024 Grammys in February, and he asked her about her 2016 hit “Peter Pan.”

“He said, ‘I remember hearing that song and hearing that hook and being like, God, I wish I had written that. I was so impressed with that hook,'” Ballerini said. “It was immediately a synergy of songwriters.”

Kelsea Ballerini Says Noah Kahan Was ‘So Open and Vulnerable’ on Toxic Masculinity-Inspired Single ‘Cowboys Cry Too’

When she was working on “And Cowboys Cry,” which she said was a tribute to the “emotional men in my life,” she thought of Kahan because he was “so sad to go there.”

“He wrote his verse and it just made the song a million times better,” she said.

The pair then joined forces in May, when they treated the crowd to a medley of Ballerini’s 2023 power ballad “Mountain with a View” and Kahan’s hit “Stick Season” at the Academy of Country Music Awards. After uniting in harmony on the final choruses, the two singer-songwriters embraced as the audience applauded.

In Ballerina’s June 26 announcement of “Cowboys Cry Too” — which will serve as the lead single from the country singer’s yet-to-be-announced album — she wrote that she is “so proud and excited to release this first song in a new musical chapter.”

Noah Kahan and Kelsea Ballerini perform at the 2024 ACM Awards in Frisco, Texas in May 2024.

Jason Kempin/Getty

Earlier this month, Ballerini told PEOPLE that she had already “recorded everything” for the album, teasing that she was “able to bring it to life visually.” “I feel like this is more than anything I could ever be,” the star said. “It’s a really nice feeling to have it all laid out and not rush it so much.”

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A few days later, Ballerini took to Instagram to seemingly confirm that she had finished the music for the new record – adding a carousel of photos and videos in the studio “album: recorded”.

The new era Tennessee native comes off the back of a stunning set at CMA Fest 2024 earlier this month, where she debuted live performances of several tracks from her latest EP Roll out the welcome mat. Ballerini surprise-released the Grammy-nominated record — detailing her divorce from singer Morgan Evans — on Valentine’s Day 2023 and dropped an extended version the following August.

Kelsea Ballerini.

Tibrina Hobson/Getty

Kelsea Ballerini jokes that she feels ‘strongly’ that she will have to ‘fight’ her co-star Vote Coach Adam Levine (Exclusive)

“I was really, really nervous about how to proceed Welcome Matt, just because it changed my life and my career so much,” Ballerini told PEOPLE earlier this month. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how to… where do I go from here?’ It was such a specific experience that I’m not in anymore, and it took me a few months to figure out what that felt like.”

Aside from releasing music, Ballerini has been busy, recently joining the cast of judges on season 27 for Vote. She will judge the contestants alongside music stars John Legend and Michael Bublé, as well as Adam Levine, who is returning to the show for the first time since 2019.

Ballerini told PEOPLE, “I’ve had to be on set in different capacities over the years, but to really take on that coaching role — it’s going to really stretch me and it’s going to be a new opportunity.”

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