Carrie Underwood — Blown Away



Arista Nashville | genius.com




The torrential country singer’s nationality is her greatest weapon
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Hey, did you catch the Grammys last week? Me neither!

According to the internet, album of the year was awarded to Kacey Musgraves’ refreshing Golden Hour, an understated anthology of sparkling small joys and cosy little wonders, each one as charming as it was fleeting. When I wrote about this album last year, I noted that Musgraves and her self-effacing confidence stand out within the genre of country music for their unequivocal un-Americanness. Her boundless empathy still warms the skin like sunshine breaking through clouds.

But this week the shoe is on the other foot.

Carrie Underwood is as American as they come.

She smashes in with thigh-high boots encasing impossible legs, smoky eyes twinkling with steely confidence, hair rippling glamourously in the wind like a flaxen halo. Hers is not a shy confidence. Hers is selfish, bordering on solipsistic.

What a pleasure it is to see this intoxicating Americanness dedicated not to mediocrity or disappointment, but to a tightly-focused, emotionally lucid collection of stories.

Carrie walks the walk. Not a grain of doubt grinds through the gears of Blown Away, which smoothly shifts between a dozen different modes of storytelling: from the very first minutes where she rubs a bastard man’s face into the mud with her heel, to the closing track, a completely ridiculous and utterly, utterly merry barnstomper terrifically titled ‘Cupid’s Got a Shotgun’, which must be heard to be believed.

Oh, he gave up on arrows a long, long time ago /
Turns out I’m too hard to hit so he put away his bow /
I might just keep on running from here to Timbuktu /
‘Cos he gave up on arrows, but I ain’t bulletproof


Like the queen of country herself, Taylor Swift, she knows how to tell a story — which details to emphasise, when to fast-forward and when to slow down, that sort of thing — but unlike Taylor Swift’s almost entirely autobiographical discography, Underwood’s songs frequently unspool into fiction. She delights in invoking the clichés and trappings associated with country music — her colourful cast of characters includes the requisite ingénue and femme fatale who respectively commit the crimes of manslaughter and murder.

The dramatic title track sees a little girl sheltering from a twister, leaving her father to the mercy of the winds:

Shatter every window /
‘Til it’s all blown away /
Every brick, every board, every slamming door


And the gothic smoulder of ‘Two Black Cadillacs’ tells a crimson-soaked tale of revenge:

And his preacher said he was a good man /
And his brother said he was a good friend /
But the women in the two black veils didn’t bother to cry


I’m struck by the economy of language on display here, how effortlessly Carrie shades in the space between the lines. Not a word is wasted. Her confidence is American certainly, but her capacity for nuance is anything but. When she chooses to deploy it, that is.

Well, he’s got me in his sights, I’ve got a red dot on my chest /
Little does he know I’ve strapped on my kevlar vest /
I pulled out my Remington and I loaded up these shells /
He’s about to find out I’m a damn good shot myself


It takes prodigious talent to throw up dust and gravel in every direction while remaining crystal-clear.

Blown Away is hoofbeats thundering across the prairies, sunset guitars blazing through a voice like the oncoming storm.