CMT Blog: Carnival Ride

I thought I knew Carrie Underwood. Carrie, the American Idol. Carrie, the paparazzi darling. Carrie, the six-million-album girl. Who knew there was another side? A chocolate-gravy-and-biscuits-lovin’ side? A take-a-nap-on-your-parent’s-living-room-carpet side? Chicago now knows that for all the fame and fortune, the Oklahoma girl is still in there somewhere.

On a trip to Chicago’s country station US99 today to promote her new album, Carnival Ride (which had first week sales of 527,101 and hardly needs promoting), Carrie talked about things she hasn’t talked about before, even with all the press surrounding this release. Like the fact that she wears Anna Sui perfume, always reads her horoscope, still drives a 2000 Mustang, calls soda “pop,” cleans her own toilets and calls her mom every day. That’s the kind of thing that reminds you just how young she is. That, and stories about gutter cleaners coming to her home in Nashville and asking if her parents were home. And saying that while fame does come with certain restrictions, “The goods definitely outweigh the bads.”

The “bads” would be the media, who might see her at a club talking to another celebrity for five minutes and report that “they were flirting all night, they were all over each other.” When she does make it to the cover of a magazine, she said she’s her own worst critic. Of the recent Target campaign where she’s in a red dress, she said, “I’m just not a red girl.”

When you consider the fame that’s been thrust upon her, and all the people she must get to meet, it was refreshing to hear her talk about the thrill of meeting Randy Travis. Carrie’s always maintained that her roots are nothing but country. When she put Travis on a pedestal, that must mean she’s telling the truth. Her cover of his No. 1 hit, “I Told You So,” is one of the best tunes on the new album. So now that I know this other side of Carrie, she seems a little more real to me. Like someone I could get close to. Maybe not BFF close. But as close as her ominous shadow of a bodyguard would let us.