Tag Archives: Blown Away

Two Black Cadillacs (Single Review) – Carrie Underwood

 

Carrie Underwood’s new single, off her platinum selling album Blown Away and as a follow up to one of 2012’s biggest country hits Blown Away, is Two Black Cadillacs, a song which sets an ominous tone the moment the first note strikes.

Two black Cadillacs driving in a slow parade. Headlights shining bright in the middle of the day. One’s for his wife, the other for the woman who loved him at night, Underwood sings as a dramatic melody plays in the background. She immediately throws us into the setting of a funeral where a preacher man is saying the man being buried was a good man and his brother says he was a good friend.

But the two women in the black veils have a secret to hide. The story could very well serve to make a movie drama and Underwood delivers it effortlessly in a few minutes.

Two months ago his wife found the number on his phone, turns out he’d been lying to both of them for far too long. They decided then he’d never get away with doing this to them, Underwood lets the plot thicken. The women, taking turns in lying a rose down on the coffin and throwing dirt into the deep ground, also have a secret to hide. So they share a crimson smile and leave their secret with the man they killed, at the grave, to die with them.

Two Black Cadillacs is a hauntingly dark song by Underwood that serves as a one-two punch by the country star as she delivers her album’s most critically acclaimed tracks as back to back singles. The darkness with which her tone delivers this song would make you think she’s lived these events herself but it’s only telling of the caliber that Underwood has turned into as a performer. As she sings “bye bye” to signal the women biding farewell to the man who betrayed them both, you can feel her voice pierce through.

Two Black Cadillacs is a song where the musicians playing couldn’t stop after it was done so they kept playing and playing. Part of them jamming is found on the album track and will probably be cut with the radio edit. The song goes fifty shades deep and is Underwood’s darkest and most thought-provoking single release to date. From the haunting thumping melody that is reminiscent of a funeral march to the rich and multi-layered storytelling lyrics, Carrie Underwood delivers. Releasing a “softer” song may have been a safer bet. But Underwood is here to let her detractors know that Blown Away was just a storm warning. Bye bye, bye bye. 

A.

Blown Away (Music Video) – Carrie Underwood

Carrie Underwood has released the music video for her second single (review) off her album of the same title (review): Blown Away.

After a few months of waiting and increasing hype, which culminated in a competition for radio stations for the right to hold a premiere for the music video, the video is finally here.

A few comments:

  • The video is very well done. The build up is intense albeit the ending was a bit disappointing and too colorful for my taste. A shot of the destroyed house to the backdrop of retreating storm clouds would have been more dramatic than the current way the video ends.
  • The Wizard of Oz inferences are present throughout: be it the yellow brick road, the tornado, plaid shirt, red shoes, scarecrow in the cellar and Carrie’s own puppy as Todo.
  • The relationship with the dad could have been illustrated a notch more. Instead of a history homework problem at the beginning, why couldn’t they take it to where the song clearly says the relationship is? The father looks like a drunk in the video – not an abusive father. You need to make that jump through the song but the video could have easily illustrated that.
  • There were small hints throughout the video that tie in very well with the song such as the main character touching a grave and walking through a cemetery around the lines “mama was an angel in the ground.”

Overall, one of Carrie’s best. Some of the comments above are merely being nitpicky about the video. But it’s truly, really, well-done.

Blown Away (Single Review) – Carrie Underwood

Dry lightning cracks across the sky, those storm clouds gather in her eyes. Daddy was a mean old mister, mama was an angel in the ground. The weatherman called for a twister. She prayed blow it down.

To an incessant heartbeat-like drum, Carrie Underwood’s newest single opens. Blown Away, the second single off the album of the same title, is the darkest song on the album in question and a drastic departure from anything Underwood had given before, be it musically or lyrically.

As Carrie Underwood’s voice breaks in a delivery echoing the character’s need for peace, the song shifts into an ethereal production where Underwood goes into a multi-layered lower register to sing the song’s most haunting line, which confirms what the opening verse makes you think of.

There’s not enough rain in Oklahoma to wash the sins out of that house. There’s not enough wind in Oklahoma to wash the sins out of that past.

Carrie Underwood may have not been the victim of abuse but she sings Blown Away with so much conviction that it’s hard to think her life wasn’t the struggle she portrays. As she feigns power to sing the song’s chorus, you can’t but hear a faint cry in her voice as she pleads to have her problems blown away by the impeding twister.

Shatter every window till it’s all blown away. Every brick, every board, every slamming door blown away. Till there’s nothing left standing, nothing left to yesterday. Every tear-soaked whiskey memory blown away, blown away.

As the tornado nears her house, the character in Underwood’s song hides away in the cellar of the house, leaving her “daddy laid there passed on the couch.” As she listened to the screaming of the wind, the song exemplifies the amount of hurt the girl has been put through in her life.

Some people called it taking shelter. She called it sweet revenge.

As Underwood shifts between impeccable falsettos and power-singing in her delivery, she delivers an excellent song that is unlike anything else on any form of mainstream radio today. Carrie Underwood is not only singing about whiskey-soaked abuse memories, she’s also telling the story of a daughter leaving her father’s breathing body to the mercy of a wind that knows no mercy, all to a chilling production.

The country-pop production is another instance in which Underwood pushes the envelope further for country radio after a country-rock first single in Good Girl. In Blown Away, the dramatic production proves necessary to bring full effect to a song that desperately cried for such an epic dramatic feel, be it on the thundery chorus or the chilling pre-chorus.

Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear, the creators of Underwood’s biggest hit Before He Cheats, have given her the song that might just rival that. Some country audiences will be rubbed the wrong way with the theme of this song but with something this incredible, Underwood shouldn’t care the least. In fact, she should be proud pf that because it’ll be the mark of how great a song this is. With Blown Away, Carrie Underwood has yet again thrown caution to the wind and let her guards get blown away.

Blown Away is a song you can’t resist getting blown away with.

10/10

Listen to the song here:

And watch a sneak-peek into the music video here:

Teaser from Carrie Underwood’s Blown Away Music Video

This was leaked from the fan club party that went on at the Opry in Nashville, a 13 second teaser from the upcoming music video by Carrie Underwood for her song: Blown Away, which I correctly predicted would be the second single off the album of the same title.

The storyline of the video looks like it’ll be what was leaked a couple of days ago:

The video opens with heavy rains. People in town running with newspapers over their heads to their cars, a lady’s umbrella gets turned inside out. The camera is zipping to different parts of the city showing people trying to deal with the storm.

The camera then zooms out of the city down a road to a big farm. It isn’t raining there, but you can see the lightning clouds coming towards the house.

The first verse starts and the camera zooms into the house. There’s an old man laying on the couch, passed out as if he were watching TV. The emergency weather service is is on the TV. Between the TV and the couch stands Carrie. Holding a picture frame and flashlight. When Carrie sings “those storms clouds gather in her eyes,” the camera zooms into her face and her eyes are watering, but she’s not crying. She shakes her head in a disgusted way, looks away from him. At the line “the weatherman called for a twister,” she shuts the TV off and walks away.

The camera goes out to the street and you see the band playing and Carrie is singing “there’s not enough rain in Oklahoma…” It goes back and forth between this and the Carrie in the house collecting all of the pictures off the walls and scrapbooks. You can see the dad still passed out on the couch and the girl walks up the stairs to her room.

When the chorus starts, the camera is switching between Carrie with her band outside (the winds have picked up a bit at this point) and Carrie in her room tearing it to pieces. She’s tearing up pictures of her dad, throwing her clothes, etc.

When the chorus ends and Carrie hits the high “Blown Away” note, the clouds are now really dark, her hair is blowing wildly and a single lightning bolt strikes near the band, tearing the ground up.

As the second verse starts, it zooms back into the girl’s room. As soon as she starts crying, it starts raining lightly outside on Carrie and the band. The winds are still blowing. It starts showing people around the neighborhood running into their cellars, gathering their kids and just kind of panicking. Carrie (the inside one) sees her father still sleep on the couch. She picks up her whiskey bottle and takes a big drink of it and wipes her mouth.

When the second chorus starts, it’s really raining hard and lightning striking everywhere and for the rest of the video, it zooms between the storm progressing, eventually with a tornado touching down right behind the band and ripping up the house and the inside Carrie who is sitting in a chair in the basement with the light right above dangling and swaying as if the house was moving. There are lots of shots of the house be ripped apart by this storm, with pictures flying everywhere etc.

At the end of the song, Carrie emerges from the basement and the entire house is gone, except for an empty couch.

Sounds great, no? Here’s the teaser for you:

Carrie Underwood Discusses Her Album “Blown Away”

With the album sitting atop the top-selling albums chart for a second week, Carrie Underwood has taken some time out of her very busy schedule to talk about the 14 songs that make up “Blown Away.” You can check out my review of the album here as well as all the lyrics for the songs here.

Some of the songs gain a different meaning. Others are still pretty-self explanatory. Overall, this is an interesting series of videos that anyone who has listened to the album, or is interested in listening to, should watch:

1 – Good Girl

2 – Blown Away

3 – Two Black Cadillacs

4 – See You Again

5 – Do You Think About Me

6 – Forever Changed

7 – Nobody Ever Told You

8 – One Way Ticket

9 – Thank God For Hometowns

10 – Good in Goodbye

11 – Leave Love Alone

12 – Cupid’s Got a Shotgun

13 – Wine After Whiskey

14 – Who Are You

Blown Away is a great album. It’s an eclectic mix of styles. You’ll find something there to suit your taste, unless you are only into trance in which case you’re out of luck. I’m a bigger fan of the slower songs on it but the uptempos are great as well. If you haven’t given it a listen, you should do so. Odds are you’ll end up buying it.