Keepin’ it Country: Carrie Underwood first achieved crossover success in 2006 with her treatise on appropriate responses to infidelity, “Before He Cheats”. But with Blown Away’s broad range of styles, somebody’s thinking about broadening Carrie’s fan base, even if Carrie says that wasn’t an intentional goal while she was cutting the album. Sure, “Good Girl” is already burning up the charts, and the album has enough singles to fuel that format for a couple years - and tracks like “Cupid’s Got a Shotgun” and “Leave Love Alone” will give programmers as much twang as they want, should they decide they want to go that direction. USA Today: Carrie Underwood’s Blown Away is an album clearly made for more than country radio. After that, the clouds part and our regularly scheduled Carrie Underwood album ensues, spilling over with creamy love songs of the heart-thumpy and heart-achy variety. This is merely a trans-faux-mation - that thing pop stars do when they dabble in minor-key melodies, frowny lyrics and/or smoky eye shadow, hoping their listeners will mistake a superficial shift in tone for a meaningful artistic left turn… So what happens when a honey-voiced tire-slasher skews “darker”? We get only a handful of songs at the front end of Blown Away to find out. The Washington Post: Carrie Underwood promised that her fourth album, Blown Away would be “darker” than the country-pop sun rays she’s been known to radiate. (Elsewhere, “Two Black Cadillacs” offers a bleaker spin on the revenge fantasy in Underwood’s 2006 smash “Before He Cheats.”) Mostly, though, Blown Away finds her using her remarkable voice to deliver feel-good bromides like those in the lightly reggae-inflected “One Way Ticket”: “Life is like a ride on a party bus,” “It matters where you’re going, not where you been,” “We’re headed to a heaven where the beat don’t stop.” Who knew the victor’s circle would be so dull? ![]() LA Times: Blown Away, the singer’s fourth album, has been described as a turn toward darkness from a singer who first topped the country chart with “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” And insofar as the moody title track finds her willing death-by-tornado upon an abusive father, that’s true. In an already impressive, multi-platinum career, Blown Away is a landmark achievement. She belts the rockin’ tunes with power and conviction, yet is equally compelling on the softer emotional ballads. ![]() PHOTOS: Academy of Country Music Awards Red Carpet Arrivalsīillboard: Blown Away is a rich tapestry reflecting the complexities of the human condition, from the poignant “Forever Changed” to the upbeat island-flavored “One Way Ticket” and the sassy lead single “Good Girl.” Underwood’s voice is a force of nature. Read below for a sampling of Blown Away reviews. At the end of the day, though, it is impossible to deny the powerhouse vocals that made Underwood a star. Neither one will cop to that, but as Chris says, "she certainly pulls it off well." And, he adds, "I believe, with all of my heart, that before went into the storm cellar, she destroyed her dad's 'pretty little souped up four wheel drive,'" referring to a lyric from "Before He Cheats.Reviews of Blown Away were mostly positive, with a few critics expressing tones of disappointment at a lack of “dark” material that was promised. So between "Before He Cheats" and "Blown Away" - not to mention her current single "Two Black Cadillacs" - do the two songwriters thing Carrie has a (not-so-) secret dark streak? In addition to the lyrics, the melody and overall sound of the song also stand out as something fresh and very different.Īs Chris explains, this was their attempt at "melodic pop" that was "unique" yet still "country." And on top of that, "if you combine a minor chord with a keyboard storm effect, something's definitely going down." "You just have to free your mind to go wherever it goes and trust that it will lead you somewhere interesting." Josh offers no 'secret' as to where these ideas and images come from. "When Josh and I write," says Chris, "we're always trying to get to the bottom of -we want to know why the character is telling us this, how she feels." So in the case of "Blown Away," "we wanted to dig up as much drama as we could." "We loved the lines, and our goal had been to create something for Carrie in the first place." So at that point, for the two writers, "It wasn't that difficult a choice to say, 'let's just go for it. "We knew if we stuck with that lyric it was Carrie's song or maybe no one would ever record it." A risky move, perhaps, but as he says, sometimes you hit a point where there is no turning back.
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