Kelsea Ballerini Tells Audience Member to ‘Back Off’ and Considers Removing Song After Fan Shouts Ex-Husband’s Name
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Ballerini responded to the remark by rolling her eyes at the crowd, giving a thumbs-up, and then flipping them off.
Kelsea Ballerini is making it clear that she expects respect at her performances.
During her headlining show in Sydney on December 6, the 32-year-old Grammy-nominated singer confronted a fan who shouted her ex-husband Morgan Evans’ name while she was performing an emotional song.
Video clips shared on social media show Ballerini performing “Penthouse” to an enthusiastic crowd when a concertgoer yelled, “Team Morgan!” The audience responded with boos, and Ballerini told the person to “f— off,” rolled her eyes, smiled, and remarked, “See? Everyone’s happy.” She then gave a thumbs-up to the crowd before playfully flipping them off.
“Penthouse” is part of Ballerini’s 2023 EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, which she wrote and recorded following her divorce from Australian singer-songwriter Evans, 40. The song’s lyrics reflect her emotional journey, including lines like, “It hurts putting s— in a box / And now we don’t talk / And it stings rolling up the welcome mat / Knowing you got half.”
After the incident, Ballerini addressed it on Instagram Stories, stating that any future disrespect during the song would result in it being removed from her setlist. She wrote, “Respectfully, if anyone yells anything disrespectful to anyone during this song again, it will no longer be on the setlist. Please let this be a song that matters to people and not a place to insert yourself into a world that doesn’t exist and was never yours to begin with. Team everyone’s happy or bust, please.”
Ballerini filed for divorce from Evans in August 2022 after nearly five years of marriage, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. A source told PEOPLE at the time that the couple had previously separated privately and attended therapy for several years, but ultimately decided to formally end their marriage.
The pair met in March 2016 while co-hosting Australia’s CMC Awards, became engaged in December that year, and married in Mexico the following year.
In an April 2025 PEOPLE cover story, Ballerini described how writing Rolling Up the Welcome Mat helped her process the “intense” period of her divorce. “I was going through what my parents did, and I went back to writing songs simply because I had to,” she explained. “I was like, ‘I have to get it out of me.’ My goal was to show other perspectives of heartbreak — to create more narrative, especially for women, around life changes and divorce.”
Since her split from Evans, Ballerini had an on-and-off relationship with Chase Stokes for about three years. They reportedly ended things in September 2025, though sightings of the pair vacationing together in Europe sparked speculation of a possible reconciliation.