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Label: Arista
Sound/Style: Forward-thinking but highly commercial country-pop
By Steve Morley
You can’t really talk about Carrie Underwood without talking about the televised talent contest American Idol. She had the goods to make it big without the benefit of her visibility on the show, but she’ll forever be known as the American Idol winner who went country—more or less—and soared higher than any winner before her. Oklahoma-raised and Baptist-bred, she has the right credentials for a country singer. Still, Underwood’s exposure on Idol gave her broad crossover appeal and proved she could handle songs and styles ranging from Pat Benatar to Elvis Presley to Martina McBride, a personal favorite of the rising young star. The stew pot of influences is still at a rolling boil on her second disc, Carnival Ride, an album that leaves no doubts about her staying power but poses some questions about her musical identity. Underwood takes on aggressive country-rockers, theatrical ballads and effervescent pop-flavored country, with only her vibrant and full-bodied vocals providing the common ground.
As its title suggests, Carnival Ride’s loosely-based theme centers upon life’s exhilarating highs and soul-stilling lows as well as the unexpected turns in between. This allows for a wide emotional range in the varied scenarios on the disc. Underwood is confident before a two-timing lover on “You Won’t Get This,” at wit’s end after a shameful indiscretion on “Last Name,” and comically bewildered about the opposite sex on “The More Boys I Meet.” (“I close my eyes and I kiss that frog/ Each time finding/ The more boys I meet, the more I love my dog.”)
Her most dramatic role is a would-be-bride who can barely accept the fact that her fiancé is a war casualty on “Just a Dream.” The song avoids obvious anti-war politics but paints an affecting picture of a wedding-day-turned-funeral that emphasizes the personal cost of military conflict: “Then they handed her a folded-up flag/ And she held on to all she had left of him/ Oh, and what could’ve been/ And then the guns rang one final shot/ And it felt like a bullet in her heart.”
“So Small” adopts an inspirational stance similar to her breakthrough hit “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” Instead of delivering the message in story form, she speaks directly about a love that transcends romance and its power to shift one’s perspective away from world-weary concerns. (“I know it’s hard on a rainy day/ You want to shut the world out and just be left alone/ But don’t run out on your faith/ ‘Cause sometimes that mountain you’ve been climbing is just a grain of sand/ And what you’ve been out there searching for forever is in your hands.”)
A shuffling and joyous rhythm propels “Crazy Dreams,” co-written by the singer. It’s another encouraging track that finds Underwood cheering on the world’s “long-shots, hairbrush singers and dashboard drummers.” Here, she alludes to her own experience as a dreamer climbing the rungs of the American Idol competition. (“I felt like Cinderella at the ball just runnin’ out of time/ So I know how it feels to be afraid/ And think that it’s all gonna slip away…”)
She ties the collection together with “Wheel of the World,” the philosophical track from which the album’s title is extracted. Like “So Small,” it refers to love in spiritual terms, but in bare-bones lyrics that sketch the cycle of life and its seemingly impassive peaks and valleys.
If the 24-year-old performer hasn’t lived all the stories she sings, her whirlwind climb to the big time informs the rush of hopes and emotions contained on Carnival Ride, an album that mainstream radio listeners should find to be just the ticket.
Audio Clips
"All-American Girl"
"Flat on the Floor"
"Just a Dream"
"So Small"
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