Kelsea Ballerini

Kelsea Ballerini started writing songs when she was 12 years old. She told Taste of Country. "(Taylor Swift) had just released her first record, so from the beginning she's just been a huge influence for me."

Ballerini moved to Nashville with her mother at the age of 15. After a few semesters studying communications and marketing at Nashville's Lipscomb University, she signed a publishing deal with Black River Entertainment. "I had 250 songs when I signed - then I wrote full-time for a year and a half," Ballerini told Billboard magazine. "When I was younger, I heard that for every 100 songs you write, you get 10 good ones and one hit - and that's proven to be so true. There's a lot of really, really terrible ones."

Interest in Ballerini's self-titled EP was sparked when, out of the blue, Swift tweeted how much she was digging the record. Ballerini said: "To have someone that you've looked up to for a long time admire your stuff and admire what you do is just a really big deal."