YMMV / Carrie Underwood

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In "Before He Cheats," was the boyfriend cheating, or was she just thinking that he was cheating?
  • In "Church Bells", did Jenny love her husband when she married him, or was she only marrying him for his money?
    • What did Jenny pray for after her husband beat her? For her husband to reform himself? For God to give her a solution? For God to forgive her for what she's about to do to him?
  • In "Blown Away", the music video somewhat contradicts the lyrics. The song implies the narrator coldly decided to let her father die ("some people call it taking shelter, but I call it sweet revenge"), whereas, in the video, she's shown loudly trying to wake him up from his drunken sleep and even physically tries to wake him. A young, petite woman deciding not to try physically dragging a sleeping, drunk man when there's potentially immediate danger heading her way is far more understandable and sympathetic than someone deciding to let a person die/be killed out of revenge. In the video, it actually is a case of her taking shelter. She did try to save him, and it's unsure what else she could have done that wouldn't have risked her own life in that situation.
    • After her initial attempts to save him, did the narrator willingly decide to abandon her father for his abuse after considering that he was better off dead? Or did she really flee into the basement when she couldn't save him, get overcome with remorse and start desperately rationalizing his death?
• Awesome Music: "Jesus, Take the Wheel" and "Just a Dream" are considered among her best. "Blown Away" likewise. From Idol, her performance of "Alone" is universally considered her best.
• Cliché Storm:
  • "See You Again" is four minutes of "you're dead, but I'm not sad" clichés that have been done a million times. It also sounds like all the "sad" songs you always hear on movie soundtracks (it was written for one of the Chronicles of Narnia films).
  • "Something in the Water" is also so clichéd that it resorts to the ultimate religious cliché, sampling Amazing Freaking Grace at the end.
  • "Love Wins" is a big pile of The Power of Love clichés, including such imaginative and inspired lines such as "You and me are sisters and brothers", "We'll never fall if we walk hand in hand", "this madness, will all fade away", and "Love's an open door".
  • "The Champion" is a typical motivational hype song fit for a sporting event, with lyrics like "I am invincible, unbreakable, unstoppable, unshakeable" and "I was made for this, yeah I was born to win, I am the champion". Features a rap by Ludacris too.
• Covered Up:
  • "Some Hearts" was first recorded by Marshall Crenshaw back in 1989.
  • She subverted this with a cover of Randy Travis's "I Told You So". A radio station started playing a version that spliced Travis' vocals into the original, so she ended up releasing a remix that had a newly-recorded vocal track from Travis (while also removing Vince Gill's backing vocal). Also led to a Funny Moment when she first performed it at the Grand Ole Opry, where after she did it Randy Travis came out on the stage behind her. The audience stood up and starting cheering, and Carrie looked behind her and squeaked "Oh my gosh!" Randy then told the audience that Carrie's voice was a lot better suited to the song than his.
• Fandom Rivalry: Miranda Lambert vs Carrie's fans don't get along, mostly because the two usually compete for awards, thus causing the other side to cry Award Snub when one of the two win.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Blown Away" became this after an F5 tornado destroyed the town of Moore, Oklahoma (in Carrie's home state, no less than is mentioned in the song).
• Memetic Mutation: "Jesus, Take the Wheel" has led to a variety of jokes and memes, either about Jesus not being a very good driver, or him stealing one of the vehicle's (non-steering) wheels.
• Moment of Awesome: Her performance of "Alone" on American Idol provided her page quote and is still cited as one of the greatest performances in the history of the show.
• Nightmare Fuel: A few of her songs have some horrifying (if not depressing) content in them.
  • "Church Bells" is about a young woman that has good looks and is wooed by a rich man, who turns out to be an abusive alcoholic. The lyrics describe how she tries to put up with it by wearing makeup and sunglasses so that everyone else is none the wiser. Eventually though, she poisons his whisky to finally stop the abuse.
  • "Blown Away" is about an implied abusive father that most likely went crazy from his wife's death and takes it out on his daughter. Eventually, she leaves him for dead when a tornado strikes their house. The father is passed out on the couch and so she takes shelter, considering it "sweet revenge" and praying that the house be "blown down".
  • "Two Black Cadillacs" is about a cheating husband who is eventually murdered by his mistress and his wife who schemed together to kill him when they found out about each other. They don't bother to cry at his funeral and each lay a rose down on his coffin and threw some dirt on the grave, leaving their secret at the grave and then going their separate ways, never to see each other again.
  • "Choctaw County Affair" is about a couple who (at least heavily implied to) murdered a woman who tried to blackmail them with evidence that could get the man (who Carrie affectionately mentions has a Hair-Trigger Temper) in jail, who the narrator dismisses as a pompous greedy snob, and get off due to the jury's sympathy.
• Questionable Casting: Her treatment of Maria in The Sound of Music Live! suggests that she can sing much better than she can act.
  • Adding to this is the fact that living members of the real life Von Trapp family felt that she wasn't the best choice for the part of Maria. At least one member of the family, the great grandson of the real life Maria, said that while he thinks Underwood is a great singer, she just isn't a good enough actor.
• Refrain from Assuming: It's not "Right Now". It's "Before He Cheats".
• Ron the Death Eater: Many portray the narrator of "Before He Cheats" as being a crazy yandere who vandalizes her boyfriend's stuff because she thinks he might be cheating, even though the chorus saying "Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats" heavily implies she actually does know he's screwing around on her. Whether or not that justifies her behavior is another matter, but many of the lyrics point to the boyfriend having a habit of infidelity, rather than the narrator just being a paranoid shrew like the internet would have you believe.

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