Carrie Underwood’s ‘Storyteller’ revels in family life
‘Storyteller’ reflects a new peace to smooth that familiar edge
Image by image, Carrie Underwood’s Instagram account is filling up with adorable pictures of her 8-month-old son, Isaiah. He’s on his own, playing a toy piano. He’s looking out his mom’s tour bus window. He’s napping with big blue headphones on, presumably listening to demos from songwriters up and down Music Row.
So her upcoming album, Storyteller, will be filled with songs about the joys of motherhood and family, right? No more calls to arms about young women being victimized by slick pickup artists or avenging
themselves by smashing up some cad’s fancy automobile?
“I’ve actually been asked quite a bit about Isaiah changing my artistry,” Underwood says, apparently addressing the question for the umpteenth time with admirable grace. “I think people kind of expected me to make a mommy album or lose my edge or suddenly start singing ‘life is beautiful/ babies are awesome’ songs.”
In fact, the seven-time Grammy Award winner acknowledges, Isaiah and his dad, husband and hockey star Mike Fisher, did inspire some of the more personal moments on Storyteller, sched
uled for release Oct. 23. What I Never
Knew I Always Wanted begins with the line “I never was the kind to think about dressing in white.” Not too surprisingly, she says finding the love of a good man and joining with him to welcome a child into their world has transformed her in ways she could scarcely have imagined.
“This song was a way to sing about Isaiah and Mike in a way that I think is relatable,” Underwood says. “There’s probably a lot of people out there who are like I was, like, ‘I never really thought about getting married. I never dreamt aboutmy wedding day or having a child.’ But now I’m like, ‘ What did I do before this?’ It’s like we’ve always been together. I’ve always needed them — I just didn’t know it.”
Another relationship inspired Underwood when she wrote The Girl You
Think I Am with David Hodges and Hillary Lindsey. “When we got together, we started talking about dads and how awesome they are,” she recalls. “I came up with the idea that my dad (Stephen Underwood) thinks I’m so much better than I am. He thinks I’m amazing and I can do anything and I’m not afraid of anything, that I can do no wrong. Hillary and I were telling dad stories, and David is a dad of several girls, so he sees it from the other side. We talked about how kids don’t really know how their parents look at them until probably they’re adults, and then it’s like: ‘I thought my parents were being totally unreasonable and just coming down hard on me. But they were looking out for me because they love me.’
“And now that I’m a parent,” she adds with a laugh, “I’m like, ‘ Wow, if only I’d known this as a kid!’ ”
These two songs stand out for mu---
sical reasons as well. Both maintain a gentle and reflective feeling, without the soaring choruses and bad-guy characters that drive such Underwood hits as Last Name, Before He Cheats, Blown Away,
Good Girl and Two Black Cadillacs. Not to worry, though: Her dramatic flair fuels the urgency of Clock Don’t Stop, the fury of being betrayed on Dirty Laundry, and Renegade Runaway, a kind of role-reversed Cowboy Casanova in which the dangerous character is female.
“Well, she doesn’t kill anybody,” Underwood observes, sticking up for her hypothetical gal-pal. “She’s just a user and a free spirit. She’s not all bad. And she’s gorgeous!”
In other words, family life hasn’t yet tempered this artist’s love for songs about sleazy guys and righteous acts of vengeance.
“In my dating past, which feels like a million years ago and thank God it’s over, I was cheated on,” she says. “I dated some not-so-great guys. So there is that revenge aspect, although the stuff I sing about, like on Before He Cheats, I would never do. I would never go and destroy anybody’s property.”
She smiles briefly. “I mean, I’m just not that dramatic.” The two threads that run through Sto
ryteller — slice-of-life sagas and more personal confessions — come together on Smoke Break, the album’s first single. Written by Underwood, Lindsey and Chris DeStefano, it portrays two hardworking folks, aman and a woman, each beset by the kinds of difficulties that have become part of the daily routine for toomany people.
In singing “Sometimes I need a stiff drink … I don’t smoke but sometimes I need a long drag,” Underwood embraces empathy in place of the judgment that some of her lyrics harbor for ill-doers. “It’s an everyman song,” she says. “We had the title before anything else. It seemed really cool for a country song. Butwe didn’t want to encourage tobacco use, so we asked ourselves: ‘ Well, what is it about? What does a five-minute break mean to you?’
“So Hillary, Chris and I started telling stories and making up little vignettes. It’s about a guy who is trying to make a name for himself and climb the ladder of success and make everybody proud, especially his dad. It’s about a woman who’s trying to work and be a wife and be a mom, trying to be everything to everybody. She’s trying to be a — quote/ unquote — ‘good Christian lady.’ It’s a Southern thing. They both have all these things to live up to. ... We’re spread so thin. It gets a little lonely.”
Even for celebrities enjoying spectacular international careers? Underwood nods. “When life and work collide, it can get weird. It can get frustrating because Mike and I are really the most normal people ever. When I’m at home, I do laundry. I make dinner. I also try to figure out how to bring my son on tour with me. Separately, everything’s a breeze. But sometimes I need to take a second away from trying to keep a house in order and feed the baby and call my mom and think about what I’m going to wear for tomorrow’s interviews.” She shrugs. “It’s all life.” How, then, does Underwood take her breather? She answers immediately. “It’s when I’m onstage. It’s my favorite thing to do because I don’t have to worry about anything. That’s my 90 minutes of escape — my 90-minute smoke break.”