6/2/2023 0 Comments Carrie underwood blown away![]() The album follows “Saints” with another fan favorite, “Dirty Old Man,” featuring a gruff lead vocal by Mr. The exception arrives during a medley that represents the band at its crowd-pleasingest: “Paul Barbarin’s Second Line” into “E-Flat Blues” into “When the Saints Go Marching In.” And to carp about that sequence of songs would be to ignore the gusto that the band still manages to bring to their execution. You hear it on “Jook,” over an Afrobeat pulse, but for the most part the horns move in a coordinated mass rather than a syncopated bramble. What’s rarer is the counterpoint that this band can do so well. “Rufus Morgan (Preacher Man)” is Southern soul, while “I Need You,” a song by Julie Miller, hints at “Gimme Shelter.” The album was produced in Austin by the Texas-based songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard, who links country to the Rolling Stones, the Band and the Staple Singers. She sings about hard-nosed characters - herself, perhaps, among them - and ways to face tough situations, and the answer is as much in the grain of her voice and the sinewy guitars as in her words. Rose works in the realm of Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Alejandro Escovedo and other terse, unflinching songwriters on the rock fringe of country. “He was supposed to be my lover, we was Hatfield and McCoys.”Īs a songwriter, Ms. “I wasn’t askin’ for much, just make some noise with my boys,” she sings. “Alimony” may or may not be a song about what eventually happened its snarling electric guitars back the tale of a woman who leaves a stultifying suburban marriage to be a musician. She released her first album, “Nanahally River,” in 2000, then withdrew into family life. ![]() Rose (whose first name is pronounced as “Shelly”) grew up in East Tennessee (where Browder Holler is) and lives in Nashville. “Blown Away” is only her fourth album, but that number belies her concrete-hard place in the country firmament, with a combination of vocal ambition and toughness that recalls a younger Martina McBride. Her best songs have historically been in the range between fury and resentment. ![]() Underwood enjoys rage her huge voice, both naïve and muscular, is well suited to it. Underwood’s 2006 smash “Before He Cheats,” except, instead of taking out her rightfully stoked dissatisfaction on her ex, she opts for unity and warns the next woman instead.Īfter that it’s a one-two punch of brutality: a quick-paced “Blown Away,” in which a young woman hides in her basement, waiting out a tornado that she hopes her abusive, alcoholic father sleeping upstairs doesn’t survive followed by “Two Black Cadillacs,” in which a wife and a mistress conspire to kill the man they share, not a murder ballad so much as a murder celebration. “Good Girl” is the first song - a little Pat Benatar, a little Tanya Tucker - and it plays out like a sequel to Ms. 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.“Blown Away,” the new album by Carrie Underwood, the shiny but tough country star, starts out loud, sassy, rollicking and wise. 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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