![]() ![]() ![]() When Taylor Dayne usurped the divine on 1989’s “Can’t Fight Fate” - “You might not understand it / Oh, but that’s what the plan is”, where “the plan” equaled “falling in love with Taylor Dayne” - her voice was big but wild, vowels bending all over the place, a hurricane organizing itself into a leering face. People sometimes refer to Underwood’s big voice as a “force of nature,” by which they mean powerful, yes - but isn’t there also something impersonal about her voice? She keeps that little edge on her notes so you can tell who’s singing, but like Beyoncé or Shania Twain, Underwood seems to exist apart from humans on a plane where cyclonic talent meets icy professionalism. She attacks her long “-ayyyyyyyyyy” sounds at top volume and without vibrato, a relentless gale flattening everything in her path. Then the storm appears, portrayed by Underwood’s voice. Under a gathering storm of pizzicato strings and regular strings, little chimey sounds and 16th-note guitar chicka-chickas, Underwood conjures “a mean old Mister” and the daughter he’s abused the daughter hides in the cellar and prays for a real rain to come and wash her scummy Daddy off the Oklahoma plains. Which, as it happens, is the plot of “Blown Away”, the title song of Underwood’s fourth album. Her arched eyebrow isn’t bracing against the storm so much as conjuring it into existence. She has an entourage of supplicants whose sole job is to ply her with combs, and anyway she controls the wind. Carrie Underwood does not need your comb. She’s poised, her skin aglow, dress billowing, hair blowing, but not the way most people’s hair blows - so messy and pitiful you wanna offer them a comb. ![]()
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