Carrie Underwood has made the sophomore slump a myth to her name. Debuting at #1 on the Billboard charts with over 500,000 copies sold, Carrie is way under her way to produce monstrous numbers like her first album did. This is because in her second album, Carnival Ride, she sticks to the formula she took with her first album Some Hearts and is reaping the benefits in doing so. Fortunately, she didn’t take the Kelly Clarkson role of changing her sound and straying from professional writing, which as we all know damaged Clarkson’s My December and her image. Carrie’s taking baby-steps to evolving her music by taking a bigger, but not yet dominant, part with songwriting while keeping her pop/country sound.
Unlike her first album, the title Carnival Ride isn’t a track; it’s the idea behind the entire album and is only mentioned in the last track. Carrie explains the meaning behind the album title by saying, “You step onto this ride called life, and it’s a crazy thing you don’t know anything about, but you get on it anyway. You do what you can to lean different directions to try and get it to go where you want it to go, but you can’t stop it – it just keeps moving. That’s why Carnival Ride works as my album title, because it describes the wonderful craziness that I’ve been through over the past couple years.”
A carnival ride indeed. The ride starts off with a bang from the country-rock track, “Flat on the Floor,” a perfect opener to this album and would also be a perfect opener for her upcoming tour in 2008.
With only a handful of songs that Carrie co-wrote herself on the album, those songs have a more personal story-telling feel to them. Her first single off the album, “So Small” is your typical love-overrules-everything kind of song with the lyrics, “when you figure out love is all that matters after all, it sure makes everything else seem so small.”
When I commented in the opening paragraph about how Carnival Ride follows the same formula of Some Hearts, I think I underplayed that statement. Both albums are nearly identical in content, tone, and delivery. Both have the energetic, anthem-like tracks to start off the album. The second track of both albums is sweet, heart-warming songs about parenthood. The third track of both albums is the nice love song. And the fourth tracks are about dealing with hard times and tragedy. The slight difference is that Some Hearts is in some way or another, an album about a girl looking for something, whether it’s love or closure over love. Carnival Ride is more about the many attempts at love and how many things went wrong. These interpretations of the albums are from the tracks after the beginning hits, when the album actually molds into a tighter concept and not just individual tracks.
Already becoming the best-selling debut of any female artist in 2007 for Carnival Ride we should expect Carrie to repeat an onslaught of awards and praise just like Some Hearts did. This American Idol winner, along with two Grammy awards, four CMA awards, and eight Billboard Music awards, it’s evident that Carrie isn’t only on top of the country music world, but she’s on top of the pop music world as well. She’s doing now what Shania Twain and Faith Hill did for country a few years back.
