 "Photo: Courtesy of JSYK.com")
Carrie Underwood, country-pop artist and season four’s American Idol winner, released her third album today, titled “Play On.”
“Play On” sounds like the type of breakup album that deals with wanting to forget someone and moving on, but doing so with caution. The singles available on iTunes involve electric guitar and drums, giving it a hard dark feeling, intermingled with Underwood’s country twang and that good ol’ country fiddle.
The first single “Cowboy Casanova” is the catchiest tune of the singles released. The single made No. 11 on Billboard’s top 100 within two weeks of its release and ranked No. 1 on Great American Country’s Top 20 list.
The songs lyrics are clever, telling women to stay away from the “devil with blue eyes” and how “he’ll break your heart, it’s just a matter of time.”
Underwood co-wrote the fifth track, “Undo It,” that vocally executes like a country song with a rock ‘n roll feel. It is a fun song much like “Cowboy Casanova,” that takes Underwood fans back to the hit “Before He Cheats,” from Underwood’s 2005 debut album “Some Hearts.”
But instead of the vengeful girlfriend, Underwood plays as she sings, “I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights/ slashed a hole in all four tires.” “Undo It” describes picking up the pieces.
Underwood is more like the crazy emotional ex-girlfriend moping about not seeing the signs: “Now I only have myself to blame for falling for your stupid games/ I wish my life could be the way it was before I saw your face.”
“Undo It” can be categorized as an angry breakup song, much like Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” with slightly less harsh lyrics, yet the same angry and bitter delivery.
To keep the balance of emotions from teetering over, another song she wrote was the eighth track, “Temporary Home.”
It is one of the lighter songs that is meant to be inspiring and empowering, a “you’ll be OK” type of track.
This song is one to skip. The lyrics are about a six-year-old orphan boy moving from foster home to foster home, a single mother in a half way house and an old man dying in a hospital. All are not afraid of their current situation because as Underwood sings, it’s “a stop on the way to where we’re going.”
Skip to the third track, “Mama’s Song,” which takes “mother knows best” to the next level. The song is about the mother-daughter relationship and what mothers teach.
But it is directed more to helicopter mothers “hop[ing] she’ll find the answer to my prayers.” The song ends with Underwood liberating herself from her mother by saying “mama don’t you worry about me.”
From the songs available to sample, Underwood is on the right track to fusing genres and making an album that has not been done by her before.
Underwood worked with producer Mark Bright who produced her two-time platinum album “Carnival Ride.”
In hoping to add more “pop” to her music, Max Martin, who produced Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” and Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” worked with Underwood on one song featured on the album.
Reach Sable Stevens at: lifestyle@thepolypost.com
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