Carrie Underwood
No doubt, the whirlwind surrounding the launch of 2005 American Idol winner Carrie Underwood’s career is exactly what the show’s producers had in mind when they created their global phenomenon. It’s a modern day, media age Cinderella story starring a down-to-earth, small town girl with loads of vocal talent who is transformed (in less than a year, anyway) into stardom beyond her wildest dreams.
“I never thought that any of this would happen to me,” she says. “These kinds of things only happen to imaginary characters on television or in the movies, not real people.”
Seemingly a lifetime away from singing "Jesus Loves Me" in church back in Checotah, OK, Underwood must feel sometimes like the protagonist in her debut single “Jesus Take The Wheel,” overwhelmed but cautiously optimistic about the plans God has for her, and willing to trust. Testament not only to the impact of Idol but also perhaps the high quality of her debut album, the singer’s CD sales have been impressive. Her 19 Recordings/Arista Records album Some Hearts moved more than 314,000 units in its first week of release, making her the highest-debuting new country artist (in the Soundscan era).
Helped along by the country hit success of “Jesus Takes The Wheel,” Some Hearts is currently #1 on the Billboard country chart and #2 on the pop album charts. Her label is also pushing the Diane Warren-penned, Kelly Clarkson-flavored title track to pop stations. The sales of Some Hearts has also been boosted by Underwood’s ubiquitous promotional presence on TV this past fall. She sang on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, The Today Show and The View, in addition to spreading holiday cheer on Dr. Phil, plus Christmas specials on NBC and TNT.
Hype and intense media exposure is all part of the machinery that drives the calculated post-Idol promotion of Underwood, but somewhere between her late May victory and the mid-November release of Some Hearts - a stretch that included a summer tour with other Idol finalists - Underwood and her team (including Mark Bright and Dann Huff, who split the production duties) put together a compelling, thoughtful collection.
Responding to its vibrant mix of hard driving, clever country storytelling (“Wasted,” “The Night Before (Life Goes On),” “Before He Cheats”) and spirited lite-rock cuts written by Diane Warren (including “Lessons Learned” and “Whenever Your Remember”) and Steve Robson/Wayne Hector (“I Just Can’t Live A Lie”), online tastemaker All Music Guide declares that Some Hearts is “ideal for either country or adult contemporary radio…better than either album Faith Hill has
released since Breathe in 1999.”
released since Breathe in 1999.”
“In looking for songs for the album, Simon Fuller, head of 19, suggested I have a meeting with some of the top songwriters in Nashville,” Underwood says. “The idea of a meeting quickly turned into a weekend at Karian Studios as a writer’s retreat. I got the chance to meet with and, in some cases, help out the writers who would be working on my album. The weekend turned out to be most helpful. The writers got to know me, and a few songs that are on the album came out of that weekend.”
“The first single, ‘Jesus, Take The Wheel’ was probably the first song I heard that really struck a chord with me,” she adds. “The song tells such a great story. And fortunately, everyone around me felt the same way about the song that I did, so recording it and making it my first single was really a no-brainer. The next one I felt a connection with was ‘Don’t Forget To Remember Me.’ The first time that I heard it, I cried because I was feeling homesick. I got the lyrics and managed to lose them in a stack of papers I was sending home. My mother got the package and read through the lyrics. She called me and said that the song made her cry. She said that it was ‘our song.’ In that moment, I knew that no matter how hard it would be to get through, I had to record it.”
Fans patient enough to go deeper in the tracking will be rewarded with “I Ain’t In Checotah Anymore,” a more traditional country tune co-written by Underwood that rolls its autobiographical lyrics by in a fascinating swirl of gratitude/excitement for her new life and homesickness/regret for the one her Idol win forced her to leave behind. No previous Idol winner has gone this deep and confessional this quickly, with such a fascinating glimpse into the emotional price of sudden fame.
“Writing songs is always something that I have been interested in, but I really didn’t feel like my writing chops were good enough yet to write the songs for my first album,” Underwood says. “I did, however, try my best to help, and I wanted to help write a song that was strictly for my friends and family back home. It’s basically an account of the things that have been happening to me over the past few months.”
Underwood was in her senior year at Northeastern State University - where she was majoring in broadcast journalism and also performed in a country music show - when she saw on the news a story about how many people were in Cleveland, sleeping outside in hope of auditioning for the 2005 American Idol season. “People were always telling me I should try out for the show,” she recalls, “but I never thought I’d be able to handle it. I decided to see where else the auditions would be held, and found out that the closest place to my home was in St. Louis, hours away. After visiting with a family friend, my mother offered to drive me if I wanted to try out.”
Underwood, her mom and a friend and her mother drove all night, arriving in St. Louis at 6 a.m., where she had to wait eight hours before singing Martina McBride’s “Phones Are Ringing All Over Town” for Idol Supervising Producer James Breen. At first she didn’t think she sang it well enough, but she was invited back the next day to sing “Independence Day” (which she later recorded on the Idol 2005 compilation CD) for Executive Producer Nigel Lythgoe. In the next round, Underwood tried Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” for the show’s judges, who sent her to Hollywood on her first-ever airline flight.
Now, living in a world where, to quote “Checotah,” “my hotel in Manhattan holds more people than our town/And what I just paid for dinner would be a down payment on a house,” Underwood is flying high, literally and figuratively, every time she turns around. She may “miss the big blue skies, the Oklahoma kind,” but millions of fans, Idol faithful and new ones hearing her for the first time on country radio, are excited to share those new horizons with her.
“I grew up listening to country music, and still hold it dear to my heart,” she says. “I have known all of my life that being a country music singer would be the most wonderful thing that I could ever do. I am so grateful to have this opportunity, and I want more than anything for my family, friends and fans to be proud of me and the music that I make. So I guess, looking back, things like this do happen to normal people. I don’t know how or why I am this lucky, but I hope I continue to be for many years to come…and, most importantly, I hope I never forget where I came from!”
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