Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan Drop Country Ballad 'Cowboys Cry Too' — See the Initial Text that Kicked Off the Duet

We have new music from Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan!

On Friday, June 28, the stars dropped their highly anticipated collaboration — country ballad “Cowboys Cry Too.” On the track, the artists bare it all, talking emotional suppression and stoic fathers, noting it’s OK to pour one out from time to time — “ ‘cause cowboys cry too.”

Ballerini, 30, and Kahan, 27, sent fans scrambling earlier this week when they first teased the track in a series of cryptic Instagram posts — including a note seemingly handwritten by Ballerini to the folk-pop star that read, “You a cowboy yet?”

In an interview on the Wayne D Show, Ballerini revealed that she first met Kahan at the 2024 Grammy Awards in February, and he asked her about her 2016 hit "Peter Pan."

"He was like, 'I remember hearing that song and hearing that hook and being like, gosh I wish I would've written that. I was so impressed with that hook,' " said Ballerini. "Immediately it was just like songwriter synergy."

When she was working on "Cowboys Cry Too," which she said honors "the men in my life that are emotional," she thought of Kahan because he is "so down to go there."

"He wrote his verse, and it just made the song a million times better," she said.

On Friday,

The pair then joined forces in May, when they treated audiences to a medley of Ballerini’s 2023 power ballad “Mountain with a View” and Kahan’s breakout hit “Stick Season” at the Academy of Country Music Awards. After uniting in harmony on the final choruses, the two singer-songwriters shared a hug while the crowd gave a standing ovation.

In Ballerini’s June 26 announcement of “Cowboys Cry Too” — which will serve as the lead single for the country singer’s yet-to-be-announced album — she wrote that she was “so proud and excited to release this first song in a new chapter of music.”

Earlier this month, Ballerini told PEOPLE that she had already “shot everything” for the album, teasing that she was “able to bring it to life visually.” “This feels like the most ahead of it I’ve gotten to be,” the star said. “It feels really nice to be able to have that all laid out and not rush into it so much.”

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Days later, Ballerini seemingly confirmed on Instagram that she had finished the music for the new record — captioning a carousel of photos and videos in the studio “album: recorded.”

The Tennessee-native’s new era comes on the heels of a show-stopping set at CMA Fest 2024 earlier this month, where she debuted live performances of several songs from her latest EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. Ballerini surprised released the Grammy-nominated record — which details her divorce from fellow country artist Morgan Evans — on Valentine’s Day in 2023 and dropped an extended version the following August.

"I was really, really nervous on how to follow up Welcome Mat, just because it changed my life and my career so much," Ballerini told PEOPLE earlier this month. "I was like, 'I don't know how to ... where do I go from here?' That was about such a specific experience that I'm no longer in, and it took me a couple months to figure out what that looks like."

Outside of releasing music, Ballerini is keeping busy, recently joining the season 27 judge lineup for The Voice. She’ll evaluate contestants alongside music stars John Legend and Michael Bublé, as well as Adam Levine, who is returning to the show for the first time since 2019.

Ballerini told PEOPLE: "I've gotten to be on set in different capacities over the years, but to really assume that role as a coach — it's really going to stretch me and it's going to be a new opportunity."