Underwood’s second CD highly anticipated
John Gerome

NASHVILLE(Tenn)—Carrie Underwood, nervous? You bet. The former “American Idol” winner sold 6 million copies of her debut album, “Some Hearts,” a phenomenal number for any artist let alone a new one. She won two Grammy Awards, scored three No. 1 country hits and shot to superstardom almost overnight.
On the eve of her follow-up, “Carnival Ride,” she’s entitled to a few butterflies — or a whole swarm of them if she wants.
“It’s so anticipated. Not just by the public, but by us, too,” she says of the disc, which hits stores Tuesday. “The whole `can we top the first one?’ mind-set sets in.’”
But Underwood says she won’t make the mistake of measuring success strictly by the numbers, especially since her debut set the bar improbably high.
“Even if it doesn’t sell as many, I feel like we’ve made a better album, which is what you want to do. You want to keep getting better and have better songs and keep sounding better and moving forward. So even if we don’t reach the numbers, I’m definitely still very pleased with it. I don’t think it will be a letdown at all.”
The first single, “So Small,” is No. 5 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and rising. Like her breakthrough hit, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” the lyrics and the music are uplifting, proclaiming “when you figure out love is all that matters after all, it sure makes everything else seem so small.”
The track is one of four that Underwood co-wrote, a step up from her one co-write on the debut. In fact, she had a larger hand in the whole project because there was much more time compared with the tight schedule after her “American Idol” win in 2005.
“I was in the studio whether we were recording or not. If Mark (producer Mark Bright) was doing something I’d come by and listen to the background vocals that were being put down, and if I found something I didn’t like maybe I’d tell the background vocalists that I think it would sound better if we did it like this,” she says. “Mark was superopen because it’s my voice and my album, and in the end I’m the one who should be most pleased with it.”
Sony BMG Nashville chairman Joe Galante says Underwood has grown since her “Idol” whirlwind, and it shows on the new record. “I don’t think anything prepares you for what happened to her in that two-year period, especially with the speed at which it happened. No matter how grounded you are or how many people you have telling you this is what to expect, until you go through it you don’t know,” Galante says.
“She’s going to be around for a long time. She’s got a career. I think that will be the biggest measure of her success,” Galante adds. “She’s on her way to having a long-term career in this business where people are gone the next year. She’s not one of those people.”