Carnival Ride
 | Arista, 2007, Audio CD Customer Rating: 235 reviews Recommend |
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Carrie Underwood's Some Hearts, hastily made and released some five months after she won the 2005 American Idol crown, was surprisingly solid and tuneful. For her follow-up, producer Mark Bright steers her toward the big Martina McBride skies, with a plethora of strings and huge emotional crescendos. Underwood co-wrote four songs, mostly with the tried-and-true tunesmiths who made Some Hearts soar. On the torchy heartache ballad "I Know You Won't," she gives a beautifully nuanced and controlled performance, but if that song would suit any number of lush female pop stars from Celine Dion on down, "Flat on the Floor" rocks hard while preserving co-writer Ashley Monroe's Appalachian angst. Still, there are missteps: the easy tears of the unlikely war ballad "Just a Dream," a too-obvious attempt to repeat the sass of "Before He Cheats" ("The More Boys I Meet"), and the Shania-ish bad-girl-on-Cuervo stomp of "Last Name." The big payoff, then, is how much 24-year old Underwood has improved as a vocalist. How often listeners line up for this Carnival Ride depends on their attitude about country music's continual melding with pop, and how they feel about a princess upstart taking home the awards that used to go to her heroes. — Alanna Nash
Carrie Underwood Photos
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More from Carrie Underwood
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- Flat on the Floor
- All-American Girl
- So Small
- Just a Dream
- Get Out of This Town
- Crazy Dreams
- I Know You Won't
- Last Name
- You Won't Find This
- I Told You So
- More Boys I Meet
- Twisted
- Wheel of the World
Title: Carnival Ride
Sales Rank: 48 in Music
Artist: Carrie Underwood
Label: Arista, 2007-10-23, Audio CD, 1 Disc
Package Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches, 0.2 pounds
- Carrie Review
- I'm certainly no music critic; I like things like art or music because they appeal to my ears and/or eyes. And this album (and artist!) certainly meet that criteria, so I like the album and give it five stars. Carrie is very talented and I don't care if my friends don't like this kind of music. I think she has a beautiful voice and I like… More reviews
- An even better sophomore CD!
- It's rare that a sophomore album outshines the first one, especially if the first was an award winning album. But Carrie Underwood's Carnival is even better than her first CD, Some Hearts. And that's not to say Some Hearts wasn't a fantastic CD. Carrie Underwood is managing to give some youth and life to the country music scene.
- Carrie Underwood
- I wanted this CD for the song "Last Name" which is a favorite song of mine, however, the rest of the CD is great. If you like Carrie Underwood this is the cd to get...... More reviews
- Not just for country-music fans
- Carrie Underwood has a fantastic voice, and this is a great CD to listen to. I heard her for the first time on an American Idol show, and she was fab, and I'm happy that I purchased the CD. More reviews
- Id Give This 10000,0000,000,000,000 if that's a number
- If I could i give a infitny number of stars I think she did way better than her first cd my favorite is all of them theres not one I dont like. More reviews