Best New Artist Nominees Kelsea Ballerini & Maren Morris Talk Repping The Girls at the Grammys

Are you familiar with Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris at all? If you aren’t, you should be.

The only female artists to be nominated at the 2017 Grammy Awards for Best New Artist, are also country artists — and you need to be paying attention to them. There’s a reason they’re nominated.

Kelsea shared in a new interview about being nominated: “It’s the people that love music, do music, judge music, fight for music for a living, saying, ‘We’ve listened to 500 hundred new artists that are eligible this year and we think you’re one of the best five.’ That makes me feel cooler than I have ever felt in my life.”

She added, “I definitely feel like for any female, the odds weren’t necessarily in our favor…we were really maybe underrated a bit in the beginning because we were on this independent label.”

Maren, who is up for three other awards at the event, says the same: “I think it’s a huge step forward for people taking women into consideration because you have to have another perspective on the radio, and I think the Grammys have done a really great solid by recognizing quality art. And I think the girls really brought it this year.”

Songs you MUST listen to from Kelsea and Maren: “Secondhand Smoke” and “I Could Use A Love Song“.

Click inside to see the first pics of Kelsea rehearsing for her performance…