Performer: "Peter Pan" is Kelsey Ballerini's first #1 single on the Hot Country Songs chart. She has had three #1 hits on the Country Airplay charts, including "Peter Pan" and her breakout single "Love Me Like You Mean It." "Peter Pan" is currently #35 on the Hot 100.
Writers: Kelsea Ballerini, Forest Glen Whitehead, Jesse Lee.
Title: Two words.
BPM: 77
Length: 3:20
Structure: Verse / Chorus / Verse / Chorus / Bridge / Chorus / Outro
Points of Interest:
1) "Peter Pan" follows a very traditional song structure, telling a very straightforward story with no ambiguity. These are the forms and techniques you read about in all the textbooks. It's good, solid songwriting.
2) There's some really cool phrasing and rhythmic variation in the chorus, which consists of six lines broken into a couplet followed by a four-line system. Five of the six lines rhyme, all except the fourth line, which creates a tension that resolves in the final two lines, including (and highlighting) the hook.
3) The verses consist of three couplets (if you include the perchorus in the verse), which feels even and stable, but still pulls toward the chorus to resolve the odd number. I'm particularly fond of the middle couplet in each verse, where the stressed-syllable count and the melodic shape work to build tension pulling into the prechorus.
4) The bridge is really just the prechorus with altered lyrics. and a different musical arrangement.
5) I read the lyrics before hearing the song, and I was expecting more of an angry kiss-off kind of a song. But "Peter Pan" is arranged and produced to create a melancholy tone, which makes for a more sympathetic storyteller, even when she zings off something mean like "You're never gonna be a man."