After Carrie’s fan club announced an online listening party for members at 9 pm CT on Tuesday April 24th, a high ranking spokesperson for Arista Nashville confirmed to me that the album will be available for streaming on iTunes for everyone on April 24th, akin to the streaming option made available for The Fray as well as Coldplay’s latest albums.
My review, as well as the lyrics for all the songs on the album, will be published immediately after I get to listen to the album. You can check out my review of the lead single Good Girlhere and the lyrics for Wine After Whiskeyhere, a song I correctly predicted would be on Blown Away.
Until then, here are the Blown Away-related news that we know for certain.
– The album is darker, evolutionary for Carrie and spans the gamut of styles. You can check out the track descriptions here.
– The second single is the title track Blown Away, as I confirmed here. The first line off Blown Away was also published by yours truly here.
This might be the reason music retailers haven’t released snippets of the album and why they didn’t do a promo singles release schedule (iTunes countdown). The wait has been cut down by one week. April 24th, here we go.
Following Good Girl, people are wondering what could be the second single that Carrie has readied for country radio. And word is, it’s a song that will stun them even more than Good Girl did.
Blown Away is the song that will blow country radio away.
Starting with an ominous forecast of freak weather hitting Oklahoma, a recent article in Billboard Magazine mentioned a lyric from the song: “Some people called it taking shelter. She called it taking sweet revenge.”
The song, according to Sony Nashville’s chairman and CEO Gary Overton is very close to a mini-movie. The whole song is very dramatic. The production on it is very tight. The lyrics are shocking and Carrie’s delivery is exquisite. In fact, Carrie had the following to say about the song:
I’ve never been so excited to hear a demo as I was that one. I got chills…we needed to find things that would fit with this [song], because if I found 13 other tracks that didn’t match with that one, I’d start over and keep that one.”
All of this is not enough to confirm Blown Away as the second single. What confirms it is the following.
– Carrie said they were torn between two songs for the first single: one that came later in the writing process and one that was great all the time. The former is Good Girl, the latter is Blown Away. If Good Girl was chosen as lead single, then Blown Away should be their second single choice.
– Carrie also said that they’d be shooting the music videos for the first two singles back to back so they wouldn’t need to wait long until they could release them. We have two images from Carrie that confirm Blown Away was already filmed:
– With her fourth album, Carrie said that her approach was drastically different – it was one geared towards more critical acclaim. With music insiders already gushing over the album and calling Blown Away a standout track among an album of standouts, the song could be the one Carrie needs. And what better way to take country radio by an even bigger storm than by the writers of Before He Cheats?
Either way, 16 more days until the album drops and until we can know for certain if Blown Away is worth all the talk. This could be, however, the first time Carrie Underwood releases the song of her album title as a single.
Carrie Underwood has just released the music video for Good Girl (check out the lyrics and my review) and she looks absolutely stunning in it. Playing both good and bad girl, she waltzes through impeccable art direction, many outfit changes and, as I’ve mentioned before, turns up her sex appeal a few notches.
With hints here and there, be it through the dresses or through the flowers (which are a constant fixture in three of her album covers), Carrie is also passing on a subtle meaning that she is moving on to a different direction: the character pulls off the petals from the daisy that was present on the cover of both Play On and her first album Some Hearts.
Some are calling it her best music video yet. Regardless of what your preference may be, this is one of her best, without a doubt. In fact, the professionalism of this video is giving me hope that this album round will not be another color by number era for Underwood. She’s actually trying her best to make it count – and it clearly shows.
The video is also very fast paced, similarly to the song, making it quite fitting and it will surely help Good Girl to become a bigger hit than it already is. And with Underwood hinting that it may soon rival Before He Cheats as her biggest hit, this video will contribute to any crossover attempt the label may be working for.
It’s been a year since Carrie Underwood had a solo single on country radio, her last one being Mama’s Song, which peaked at #2 on the country charts.
Taking her time with the preparations for her upcoming album, set for a May 1st release date, Carrie Underwood has been building the momentum for both her lead single, Good Girl, and her album. The anticipation for the lead single has reached stratospheric proportions among country audiences, especially following an Amazon clip and a teaser that Carrie posted on YouTube.
And now Good Girl is here. Was the long wait for new Carrie music worth the wait? I guess you’ll have to read the remainder of this review to find out. Who am I kidding? Good Girl is way better than I thought Carrie’s lead single would be. Add to that my already very high expectations and the scenario becomes: this is a knockout blow delivered by Mrs. Underwood (or is it Underwood-Fisher now?).
The song opens with a killer guitar riff to a backdrop of drums and hand-clap percussion to which Carrie starts: “Hey good girl with your head in the clouds. I bet you I can tell you what you’re thinking about. You’ll see a good boy, gonna give you the world. But he’s gonna leave you crying with your heart in the dirt….” Then she takes it up a notch vocally to growl the rest of the first verse: “His lips are dropping honey. But he’ll sting you like a bee. So lock up all your lovin’, go and throw away the key. Hey good girl, get out when you can I know you think you got a good man…”
And then she starts signing the chorus, which has a very different melody, creating a hook in itself in the transition between verse and chorus: “Why, why you gotta be so blind? Won’t you open your eyes? It’s just a matter of time till you find he’s no good, girl. No good for you. You better to getting on your goodbye shoes and go, go, go. You better listen to me he’s low, low, low….” It doesn’t hurt that Carrie kills the rocking chorus vocally as well. Starting with heavy tempo, it turns to simply Carrie’s voice to a backdrop of drums as she sings “he’s no good, girl, no good for you.”
The tempo then picks up again for the second verse: “Hey good girl, you got a heart of gold. You want a white wedding and a hand you can hold just like you should girl, like every good girl does. Want a fairytale ending, somebody to love.” Then she takes it up a notch again for the second part of the verse – all with a killing line to end it: “But he’s really good at lying girl, yeah, he’ll leave you in the dust cause when he says forever, well, it don’t mean much. Hey good girl, so good for him, better back away honey, you don’t know where he’s been.”
Carrie then repeats the chorus before going into a pure rock bridge that will leave you absolutely stunned. “He’s no good, girl. Why can’t you see? He’ll take your heart and break it. Listen to me, yeah…“
The bridge starts with a shout and ends with a falsetto. Enough said, right? I was hoping for a bigger chorus, but this one delivers just right.
The song then ends with another version of the chorus which ends with Carrie singing “he’s no good girl, no good for you. You better get to getting on your goodbye shoes” acapella – nothing to back her up on it. And the song ends.
Perhaps the correct title for the song should have been “Damn Girl” because Carrie Underwood is back and she’s not messing around with anyone. From the second the song opens, you know this isn’t like anything Carrie has given her audience before. The fact that this is probably the best she has sounded on a recorded track only helps to elevate Good Girl from the hit that it is to a truly amazing song. It’s absolutely brilliant to see such vocal versatility with Underwood. She can literally sing the phonebook (or one of my medicine books) and get you absolutely interested in what she’s singing. Her vocal ability translates onto Good Girl and then some more. And on Good Girl, she sings with the song’s production, not on top of it.
The song is also different structurally from what Carrie Underwood’s fans are used to. There’s no three-verse storyline. There are no lyrics which can be considered sappy. It’s all in your face. Who would have thought a Carrie Underwood song would contain the line: “Better back away honey, you don’t know where he’s been?” No one. And yet it feels so natural to have such strong lyrics in Good Girl. Why? Because the song demands it. And Carrie delivers.
The country-rock sound is also a very welcome change for Underwood. This is also the most rocking she has been in a song before, with the song still having much needed country elements. Her detractors will shout “she’s not country” at her new offering. But who cares when you’ve got such a song on your table? You simply don’t. You welcome it and you listen to it with a smile on your face because it’s just that awesome.
Carrie Underwood is back, ladies and gentlemen. And she’s here to reclaim that #1 spot at the top of the charts like a good girl does.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 