Home Music

Morgan Evans Turned His Kelsea Ballerini Divorce Song Into a Whole Damn Docuseries

The five-part series covers the viral debut performance of “Over for You” and Evans’ ensuing Australian tour

Morgan Evans

Scott Legato/Getty Images

One of the wildest divorce sagas Nashville has seen in a minute just got another chapter. On Tuesday, Morgan Evans released a new online docuseries centered around his song, “Over for You,” which he wrote about his split from Kelsea Ballerini.

The series comprises five YouTube videos, all under 10 minutes, and starts with a behind-the-scenes look at Evans’ viral debut performance of “Over for You” at the CMC Rocks QLD Festival in Australia last September. Evans had written the song about a week before, and his divorce from Ballerini was finalized a few weeks later in October.

The rest of the Over for You series follows Evans on his tour of Australia and New Zealand and includes footage of the singer-songwriter with his family. The trek was a major homecoming for the Australian artist, who hadn’t toured there in three years and had to delay the trip because of the pandemic. But while that comprises the bulk of the series, Evans acknowledged to CMT how the undertones of his high-profile divorce seeped through.

“The whole idea was to document the biggest show of my career, playing the CMC Rocks Festival in Australia and headlining it,” he said. “The original focus was on the music and coming home, and that’s what it’s about. But it’s not like I could pretend like something wasn’t going on. That’s the journey of what happened in that moment of my life.”

The Over for You series arrives on the heels of Ballerini’s public salvos about the dissolution of their marriage. On Valentine’s Day, she surprise-released a new EP, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, and an accompanying short film, both of which were clearly inspired by their split. Not long after, Ballerini offered some pretty frank details about everything during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she even discussed “Over for You.”

“Who you marry is not who you divorce,” she said. “As he’s putting out a song about being blindsided, he’s taking half the house that he didn’t pay for.” She added: “I was not perfect, he was not perfect, it was not perfect. And so, there were definitely moments that I look back on where I’m like, ‘Oh, I should’ve done that different,’ or, ‘I could’ve showed up here. I could’ve taken the flight this time.’”

Evans, in turn, responded to the interview with a statement on social media, writing, “It’s really sad for me to see this person, who I spend so much of my life with, and loved with all my heart, saying things that aren’t reality and that leave out what really happened. If this is what she needs to heal, I hope it helps.”

From Rolling Stone US