It’s been seven years since Carrie Underwood won American Idol. In that time, she’s become one of the biggest recording stars in the United States, with three (soon to be four) multi-platinum albums and an amassed fortune of around $20 million. Yet, chances are, you could say her name to 95% of people in the United Kingdom, and you’d be met with a blank stare. No real wonder, really, given that Carrie is a star of a genre not usually known for selling well on these shores: country music. However, thanks (presumably) to the crossover success of Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum, Carrie is finally launching here this week with her first official UK release, ‘Blown Away’.
Now, if the fact that I consider myself on first name terms with her wasn’t enough to convince you, let me just say now: I’m a big Carrie Underwood fan. I know every one of her albums by heart, including, incidentally, ‘Blown Away’, which I have owned since the US release six weeks ago. I’m not a neutral observer; I want ‘Blown Away’ to be huge, selling millions of copies, and making Carrie the biggest star in the UK in the process. You might think, therefore, that I’m going to automatically give the album a five star review, and that there’s no point in you reading any further…but you’re wrong. I love ‘Blown Away’ in an ‘I-love-everything-Carrie-does’ sort of way, but in her attempts to reach that crossover market, I’m sorry to say that she might have lost what made her so darn appealing in the first place.
‘Blown Away’ is, unsurprisingly, Carrie’s least ‘country’ album to date. Her style has always leaned towards glossy pop rather than all-out country, but she takes this a step further on ‘Blown Away’; around half of the songs on the album avoid the country sound entirely, preferring to stay within a safe, melodic, and (sad to say) forgettable pop area. Songs like ‘Do You Think About Me’ and ‘Nobody Ever Told You’ rank among the weakest in Carrie’s back catalogue, while the reggae-tinged ‘One Way Ticket’ errs on the wrong side of corny. Meanwhile, when she does go all-out country on ‘Cupid’s Got A Shotgun’ and ‘Leave Love Alone’, it sounds forced. This is a huge shame, because at those times when she manages to successfully combine her country sensibilities with a slicker, more modern sound, ‘Blown Away’ is brilliant. Thematically darker and more mature than her previous albums, there are a number of radio-friendly and classy songs: the title track, a mid-tempo ballad about domestic abuse, is powerful and vocally magnificent, while ‘Two Black Cadillacs’ covers revenge in a rather unique way. ‘Good in Goodbye’ stands amongst Carrie’s very best ballads, and first single ‘Good Girl’ is a tremendously catchy number, featuring some of the singer’s best vocals to date. As a fan, it’s good to hear Carrie’s sound evolving from the ‘little country-girl’ anthems of her previous albums, and these are songs which absolutely deserve to be heard by a wider international audience. It’s sad to wonder, though, just how good ‘Blown Away’ might have been if it wasn’t so clearly compromised by attempts to reach that audience.
Verdict: 4/5*
*mark possibly influenced by that whole ‘not a neutral observer’ thing.
