Carrie: Short Attention Span CD

Carrie Underwood’s new CD, “Blown Away,” demonstrates a wide range of music.  Carrie told Country Countdown’s Lon Helton that’s by design: “I have a problem wrangling myself in, and focusing on one thing, I have a short attention span, like a lot of people do.  I want to make an album where you don’t know what you’re gonna get from song to song.  That makes for a fun album and a fun tour when I’m not singing the same song for 14 tracks.  That may work for some people, but that don’t work for me.  I’m so influenced by so many different kinds of music.  I feel blessed that one week I can sing with Steven Tyler, and then the next week sing with Tony Bennett.  Random!  I love that.  I love not having to sing a certain kind of song.  I can sing whatever I want, and that’s fun.”

Let’s talk about “Two Black Cadillacs,” what an interesting subject for you to write about: “The song itself is a soap opera, it’s a mini-movie.  My co-writer Josh Kear came in with this loop singing “two black cadillacs,” and from there we filled in the blanks.  There’s two women, there has to be a dude, and he has to be a creep.  So he’s married to one, the other’s the mistress, so let’s make him a total creep.  The wife doesn’t know about the mistress, the mistress doesn’t know about the wife, they’re both being lied to, and what do they do?  Naturally, they kill him!  So you root for the women, because they were lied to.  We don’t give the details, because we want for the people to make things up in their head.  They meet for the first time at the funeral, it’s one of those songs you want to hear all the way through.  When we recorded the song, I was done singing, and the band kept playing.  They just vamped, and it was like “roll credits” to me, like at the end of a movie and the credits roll.  So if it becomes a single, and we do a video, I think I’d keep that in there.”

Forever Change: It’s just beautifully written.  “I didn’t write it, but it’s probably the most well-written song I’ve ever heard.  There’s something old-fashioned about it.  It’s set in another time, you can see the girl and the guy, and it’s just beautiful.  Every time I listened to the demo, I could barely listen to it.  Then when it came time to record, there was a fine line between putting my heart in it, and thinking about other stuff.  I’ve since listened to it a zillion times, and I still can’t get through it.  I almost wouldn’t want it to be a single, because I’d have to sing it every night.  Even now my eyes get watery. 

Cupid’s Got a Shotgun: Brad Paisley plays guitar on this song.  My guitar player was trying to learn all of Brad’s licks, and he was saying he’s having trouble playing it.  But apparently, Brad Paisley had trouble playing his own parts.  So he outdid himself.  We were at Little Jimmy Dickens’ birthday party, and I saw Brad, and he asked how the album was going.  I told him there was a song that needed some guitar, and he said, ‘Send it over,’ and that’s how it happened.    

Category: Audio, VIDEO