Kelsea Ballerini’s “Emerald City” video dropped over the weekend of 14 December 2025, and country fans can’t agree on what they’re watching.
Some see artistic genius in director Patrick Tracy’s Wizard of Oz imagery. Others reckon it’s just a high-fashion lookbook with a phone prop.
After a week of debate, the verdict’s still out: symbolic storytelling or expensive confusion?
The 2026 Grammy nominee premiered the visual whilst wrapping her Australian tour. At her Mount Pleasant Experience concert in Nashville on 17 November, she described the track as her “admission and ick of comparison and jealousy.”
The song tackles the uncomfortable truth about comparing yourself to a partner’s ex.
Tracy’s job was translating that specific feeling into visuals. The results are gorgeous but muddled.
What Works
Tracy nails the opening. That ringing phone in an empty room, with Ballerini walking toward it but never arriving, immediately captures jealousy as an unreachable disturbance.
She’s moving but staying stationary, trapped by intrusive thoughts. It’s the video’s sharpest image.
The lake scene delivers the second strong moment. Ballerini sits on a chair in still water, phone on the surface with ripples spreading outward.
She reaches but doesn’t answer. The visual language works: one intrusive thought disrupting your entire peace, with the choice to engage or refuse visible in her gesture.
The finale pays off when Ballerini strides through city lights in that emerald-green sparkly dress.
She’s owning the colour she spent the song envying, reclaiming “emerald” as her own identity. Tracy shoots her in full command of the frame – no longer small or vulnerable but confident. When it lands, it lands hard.
Ballerini’s performance saves considerable ground throughout. When she kneels in that poppy field with rain streaming down, you believe her.
When she drops the phone in the mud, there’s real release. Her physical choices convey the emotional beats Tracy’s direction sometimes obscures.
Where It Stumbles
Between those strong moments, Tracy loses the thread. Ballerini wanders through darkness in a shimmering dress, all teal and blue tones, but the shots repeat the same emotional note. It’s beautiful but static.
The poppy field pushes into heavy-handed territory. Tracy shifts weather from sun to storm as Ballerini drops to her knees surrounded by flowers, finally holding the phone but refusing to answer it.
The Wizard of Oz symbolism reads obvious: Dorothy’s poppies made people sleep, Ballerini’s trying to stay awake to her worth. The execution feels laboured despite the gorgeous cinematography.
The costume changes don’t help. Ballerini appears in multiple high-fashion looks across the shoot, but the changes don’t track with emotional progression.
She’s wearing different dresses because they photograph well, not because they advance the story from insecurity to confidence. That’s where the “glamour shots” criticism hits hardest.
Tracy had clear emotional territory. Ballerini sings about realising you’re comparing yourself, catching yourself being jealous, confronting those feelings, choosing not to let them control you. That’s a defined arc.
Tracy throws five competing metaphors at the screen instead: the unreachable phone, water ripples, Wizard of Oz poppies, weather shifts, the emerald transformation. Pick one and develop it. Five creates clutter.
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The Reception
Social media splits on whether this works. Some see layered symbolism. Others see disconnected fashion photography. Both responses make sense because Tracy’s vision sits uncomfortably between mood piece and narrative.
He wants artful visuals whilst tracking Ballerini’s emotional journey, but those goals need tighter editing to work simultaneously.
The Verdict
Patrick Tracy shot expensive, technically flawless footage that doesn’t quite serve the song. The opening phone sequence and lake chair prove he can translate Ballerini’s themes into powerful imagery.
He just needed to commit to one visual language instead of scattering metaphors across disconnected locations.When Ballerini’s performance breaks through the stylised framing, the video connects.
Those moments are too sparse. Country videos often play it safe with literal interpretation, so Tracy’s conceptual reach deserves credit. But ambition without editorial restraint produces gorgeous confusion.
The phone keeps ringing throughout. By the end, Ballerini’s not answering. That’s the progression. Tracy just needed fewer distractions letting that simple story breathe.