Music
Carrie Underwood
Some Hearts (Arista)Early in the last season of American Idol, when Carrie Underwood was just one of 11 wannabe stars, judge Simon Cowell predicted she would not only win handily, but would sell more albums than any of the show’s previous winners. Less than a year later, her debut album has already sold more than a million copies. (She’s yet to best multiplatinum champion Kelly Clarkson.) A polished, well-rounded, country-pop record, Some Hearts and its accompanying publicity blitz position Underwood comfortably for the kind of crossover stardom that many acts labor for years to achieve.
This is part of what makes Idol so compelling: before our eyes, a timid college senior is transformed into the next Faith Hill. It’s hard to imagine what that experience is like, but Underwood takes a stab at telling us on the autobiographical “I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore,” noting wryly, “My hotel in Manhattan holds more people than our town.”
“Checotah” is an appropriate closing statement for Some Hearts, an album full of young women faced with the unknown, experiencing firsts as prosaic as bills and as profound as true love. In “Don’t Forget to Remember Me,” an 18-year-old heads for the big city with a map, a Bible and a $50 bill from her mama, accompanied by spiraling fiddle accompaniment that captures the bittersweet tension between longing for home and reveling in the first taste of independence. Even in seemingly straightforward love songs like “That’s Where It Is,” that quarter-life crisis is present, as Underwood gives thanks for support “when I’m crashing through the madness / Not sure who I’m supposed to be.”
“We’re Young and Beautiful” is a more playful ode to youth, as the narrator implores her beau to kiss her while she’s still got the goods. But even as Underwood’s laid-back vocals convey the insouciance of a woman with a lifetime of kisses ahead of her, some lightning-fast guitar picking drives the groove forward, unapologetically marking the time that slips by so quickly.
It’s one of life’s great ironies that the young are often far more anxious about that passage of time than the old, as they struggle to define who they are and what they’ll leave behind. That particular anxiety reaches a fever pitch on “Wasted,” a darker shade of country-pop that draws on anthem rock to document the epiphanies of an alcoholic and his estranged lover determined to change the direction of their lives.
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Sophisticated in composition and production, “Wasted” pushes Underwood to both ends of her vocal range. She growls the gravelly verses, but when it’s time to declare “I don’t want to spend my life jaded, waiting,” she releases the notes from her higher register like a trap door springing open. It’s a combination that ups the song’s emotional ante considerably.
The space between childhood and adulthood is barely longer than a breath, but it’s a time when the world seems both full of promise and terrifyingly large. Some Hearts captures this tension well, its characters giving themselves over to the joy of youth while planning feverishly for the future. It’s an endearing snapshot of a moment that for most of us is over quickly—but not a moment too soon.