REVIEW: Carrie Underwood – Renegade Runaway

Self referentiality in music is one of my favourite things in the entire world. Britney Spears singing “my loneliness ain’t killing me no more” on Stronger after having sung “my loneliness is killing me” on …Baby One More Time is up there with my favourite pop culture moments of all time. Carrie Underwood doesn’t do it quite so obviously here with Renegade Runaway (RR), but singing essentially a gender-swapped version of her 2009 hit Cowboy Casanova (CC) (I don’t think the alliteration of the titles is a coincidence) is something we probably should have all seen coming.

REVIEW: Carrie Underwood – Heartbeat.

I think where Carrie Underwood may have gone wrong when recording “Smoke Break” is that the song feels very much like she’s telling someone else’s story, when listening to it I don’t feel a connection to Carrie whatsoever. That may be the reason that “Smoke Break” kind of bombs, Carrie is a great Storyteller but I think her talent shines through much better when she’s invested in the story personally herself and the song felt clunky and forced as a result of the disconnect between her and the lyrics.

REVIEW: Carrie Underwood – Smoke Break

The first verse of Carrie Underwood’s new song “Smoke Break” talks about a working mum with three kids and, honestly, you couldn’t be blamed for assuming that’s who wrote the song. Storytelling is usually Carrie’s forté (in fact her upcoming album is fittingly called “Storyteller”), but she drops the ball on this song with clunky lyrics and clunky production.