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Carrie, you're not just the girl to beat, you're the person to beat. I'm going to make a prediction that not only will you win this show, you will sell more records than any other previous Idol winner.
—Simon Cowell
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Never bet against Simon.
Carrie Marie Underwood-Fisher (March 10, 1983-) is an American country singer and songwriter. At 22, Carrie, a country farm girl from Checotah, Oklahoma, auditioned for the fourth American Idol with "I Can't Make You Love Me". Although the judges were impressed, it wasn't until Underwood sang Heart's "Alone" that her true potential appeared. She won the final over Bo Bice and immediately proved Simon right: Like Kelly Clarkson before her, Underwood became a star in her own right and took the Country Music world by storm (though unlike Clarkson she has broken completely free of her association with the Idol brand). She has since won multiple Grammys and set a benchmark for Idol success that has yet to be surpassed. Almost none of her singles have peaked at lower than second, which by itself is an impressive streak, but the strong sales of her albums and omnipresence in two genres are next-to-impossible to ignore.
Albums
- Some Hearts (2005)
- Carnival Ride (2007)
- Play On (2009)
- Blown Away (2012)
- Storyteller (2015)
- Cry Pretty (2018)
Tropes present:
- Album Title Drop: Carnival Ride contains the song "Wheel of the World", which has the line "God put us here on this carnival ride".
- Break Up Song: "Before He Cheats".
- Buffy-Speak: From "Undo It": "You stole my happy / You made me cry / You took the lonely / And took me for a ride"
- Daddy's Girl: "All-American Girl".
- Disproportionate Retribution: "Before He Cheats," in which she vandalizes her boyfriend's property after finding out that he has been cheating.
- It's especially bad because she doesn't even have any hard evidence of his infidelity.
- Even worse when you consider the lyrics say "He's probably" doing something, which adds a whole new spin on the story...
- Dual-Meaning Chorus: "Jesus, Take the Wheel," from literally taking the wheel in a car crash, to "taking the wheel" of the singer's life.
- Also "Temporary Home". In the first two verses, a foster child and a mother in a halfway house see their respective dwelling as "temporary homes" in the physical sense; the dying old man in the third verse sees his life on Earth as a "temporary home" in the spiritual sense (i.e., he's about to go to Heaven).
- Hair of Gold
- Incredibly Long Note: Occurs at the end of "Just a Dream".
- Jesus, Take the Wheel
- Lyrical Shoehorn: "And I wanna uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-undo it".
- Ode to Sobriety: "Wasted" is a type 1.
- Older Than They Look
- Recycled Premise: "Last Name" is basically a gender-flip of Alan Jackson's "I Don't Even Know Your Name".
- Southern Belle
- Vehicular Sabotage: Done in "Before He Cheats"
- Vocal Evolution: She's gone from belting nearly everything to a more diverse vocal and dynamic range. "Good Girl" has her doing some impressive rock growls.
- Wartime Wedding: Implied at the beginning of "Just a Dream".
- What the Hell, Carrie? Cast as Maria von Trapp in the live adaptation of The Sound of Music, let's just say she had a few choice words for the critics. Also led to What the Hell, Casting Agency?
- Woman in Black: In "Just a Dream".
- Woman in White: Also in "Just a Dream".
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The protagonist of "Blown Away"