Carrie Underwood

Carre Underwood’s first single off  of her new untitled album has been released today. It is titled “So Small” and was co-written by Carrie Underwood, Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey. Lindsey also cow-rote “Jesus Take The Wheel” and “Wasted”. Carrie Underwood has several song writing credits, including those off of her new album, which is scheduled for release on October 23, 2007. Anyone who wants to hear the new single can call in to their favorite radio stations and request it.

Here’s the upcoming airtime for Carrie Underwood today on GAC:

07:56 PM - Wasted

Sorry for the delay, but I was unable to watch GAC’s Top 20 Countdown to check what position “Wasted” was in on Friday. For some reason GAC seemed to be “out in my area” for awhile. The cable company is planning to movthe station as well so that may have played a role. Ever since Suddenlink bought out Cox, it’s pretty much been trouble. So I had to wait until GAC updated the website. Anyhow….

 ”Wasted” has slipped to #5 on the GAC Top 20 chart. She got bumped down a notch by Brad Paisley’s “Online”.  That’s not so bad when you look at Miranda Lambert’s “Famous In A Small Town” whcih got bumped from #5 all the way to # 8. It looks Like Bucky Covington’s “A Different World” and Tim Mcgraw and Faith Hill’s ”I Need You” are on the rise, which may spell trouble for Carrie in the long run.

Here’s the video airtimes for Carrie Underwood today:

02:49 PM - “Wasted”

07:37 PM - “Before He Cheats”

Tonight is the weekly Top 20 Countdown on GAC. We’ll see if Carrie Underwood manages to hold on to #4 with “Wasted” or is she moves up or down a notch. The ringtone for “Wasted” is one of the featured ringtones over at CMT, if you wanna drop by and get it. The ringtone lasts 10 seconds, and features the line “‘Cause I don’t wanna spend my life jaded, waitin, to wake up one day and find”…You can get it for $2.99 which may be good or bad depending on how interested in the ringtone you may be.

Askmen.com has Carrie Underwood featured as “Singer of The Week“. The article lasts for about three pages, and has an introduction to Carrie as well as details about her life, and comments for the author. The article is insightful, and spends most of the space praising Carrie’s looks, voice, and most everything else you can think of. Carrie is also featured in ‘Askmen’s Top 99 Women of 2007′. She was ranked around #78 last I checked, but that’s more than likely going to drop in the near future. Anyhow, here’s the scheduled airtimes for tonight and tomorrow for Carrie’s videos on GAC:

Upcoming video airtimes for Carrie Underwood for Friday July 27:

06:00 PM - “Before He Cheats”

07:28 PM - “Jesus Take The Wheel”

(Note: This does not include the video for “Wasted” on the Top 20 Countdown)

Upcoming video airtimes for Carrie Underwood for Saturday July 28:

09:40 AM - “Wasted”

I’ve only watched one complete season of American Idol. And I didn’t really plan on it, I just happened to be visiting a friend when it came on. And I’m going to admit something that the writer of a Carrie Underwood fan blog probably shouldn’t…I didn’t watch Idol because of Carrie Underwood. I was a Bo Bice fan throughout most of it. I figured him to be the underdog, so I sort of enjoyed watching the long-haired southern rocker make it to the finals. When it came down between Bo Bice and Carrie Underwood, I was still leaning toward Bice. Then Carrie Underwood sang a song called “Inside Your Heaven” as did Bo Bice. By that time, I was enjoying watching both of them perform so i was happy no matter who won. As fate would have it, Carrie came out on top and it’s been a non stop whirlwind ever since.

Carrie Underwood came through and obliterated the benchmark that Kelly Clarkson had set for success. You could probably argue that Ruben Studdard or Clay Aiken did well in their own right, but neither have really come close to matching Kelly Clarkson as far as album sales and worldwide success, much less Carrie Underwood. With the past season of American Idol behind us, we’ve seen emerging artists such as Kellie Pickler and Chris Daughtry. Idol winner Taylor Hicks seems to be struggling. Chris and Kellie are becoming increasingly known and successful, but to either stand a chance of topping Carrie Underwood? Probably not. And I don’t say that out of bias because I write for a Carrie Underwood blog, and I’m actually a big fan of Daughtry. But as with most things, someone has to go down as a legend. Someone has to be remembered as the absolute best thing to come out of American Idol and Carrie Underwood has a good shot. Never mind that she’s pretty and half of the guys in  America are ‘in love’ with her, while a good portion of girls want to ‘be like’ her. Four hit singles and six million album sales is nothing to sneeze at, even for a seasoned performer.

I truly believe Carrie Underwood is going to be the benchmark for all future idols for a long time coming. Everything seemed to have hit at exactly the right moment, and obviously Simon Cowell could see it coming when he predicted that Carrie would not only win idol but would be a mega success. Whether or not anyone will top Carrie Underwood’s current string of music victories remains to be seen. And as for Bo Bice, I guess it’s good that I’m not a talent scout, because I certainly thought he’d be well established by now. Anyhow enough rambling for now, I would post the upcoming airtimes for Carrie Underwood videos but GAC hasn’t updated them. I’ll check back later and see if they have anything.

GAC is featuring video interviews with some of country music’s top artists. The default video is of Carrie Underwood speaking about her album, winning ACM Awards for Top Female Vocalist as well as Album Of  The Year. The interview runs a little less than two minutes, and Carrie speaks about her album sales, her acceptance speeches, and the whirlwind of overnight stardom. And as always, Carrie looked absolutely stunning in her dark blue gown. You can also view clips of Carrie and sometime boyfriend Tony Romo in an ACM red carpet interview. There are some advertisements before the interviews which can be a bit annoying, but the footage is worth watching nonetheless. You can view music videos and clips of other country music starts while you are there.

Carrie Underwood is now in second place in the GAC Poll “If you could pick one of these country stars to come over to your house for a summer BBQ, who would you choose?” She’s about five points behind Keith Urban but is still far head of everyone else.

If you haven’t dropped by CMT to view the CMT Loaded Anniversary, they still have Carrie’s “Before He Cheats” video on default to celebrate not only CMT’s one year mark at streaming videos online, but also “Before He Cheats” being the most requested video of the year. I’d like to add that GAC has been a little slow at times in updating the airtimes for Carrie’s videos, and sometimes they don’t update until the airtimes have passed. Regardless i’ve got the information I could get for today. I’m thinking of writing CMT and seeing if they could list the airtimes for artist’s videos as well.

Here are the airtimes for Carrie’s videos on GAC for today:

11:11 PM - Wasted

And here is the solitary airtime for Carrie’s video tomorrow:

03:11 AM - Wasted

Good news! CMT is celebrating the one year anniversary of their CMT Loaded online video player. And what better way to go about it than showcasing the #1 streamed video? Carrie Under’’s “Before He Cheats” is an undeniably catchy song,  so much in fact that it stands at the top of the country music video pile and has been declared the most played song online at CMT.

You can head over to CMT and check out their CMT Loaded feature, which shows videos by artists such as Martina McBride and Joe Nichols, but Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” is the default video that will be playing when you click on the link. Congratulations Carrie! Things just seem to be getting better and better for her.

I’ve just finished watching the ABC two-hour special “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” which featured performances from this year’s CMA Music Festival in downtown Nashville. Among the footage shown was Martina McBride’s uplifting rendition of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, pre-teen music prodigies performing onstage with Big N Rich, and Dierks Bentley giving fans a personal tour of the CMA Music Festival. The show featured performances by Bentley, Big N Rich, and McBride, as well as Kellie Pickler, Taylor Swift, Alan Jackson, a powerful duet with Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson, and Brad Paisely, among others.

Carrie Underwood was shown as the next to last performer, looking physically striking and sounding spectacular. Dressed in a short, tight black dress (which looked brownish maroon in the light), black high heels and huge hoop earrings, Carrie Underwood belted out a powerful version of “Wasted”. The camera cut to the audience a few times and showed fans dancing, singing, and really getting into the performance. Carrie Underwood’s voice sounded splendidly on point, with her murderously long holding of the word “Wasted” bringing an end to what may have been the best performance of the night. After Carrie Underwood’s breathtaking performance, Miranda Lambert closed the show (or the special rather) with a racy, sexy version of “Kerosene”.

All in all ABC’s coverage of the CMA Music Festival was optimal as far as trying to capture and edit a multi-day event into only two hours. They did a good job giving equal time to performers, fans, and performers interacting with fans. The quality of the show looked really nice and professional, and the showflowed along smoothly in an upbeat kind of way. Let’s hope that they will continue the tradition of covering the CMA Music Festival next year.

Last week Carrie Underwood’s saucy revenge ballad “Before He Cheats” rested comfortably in the #15 spot at VH1’s Top 20. This week it seems the video has disappeared off of the chart completely. Given that VH1’s Top 20 is based upon viewer voting, it may be unlikely that “Before He Cheats” will crack the Top 20 again anytime soon. With the shocking speed at which Carrie Underwood’s video not merely failed to move forward or slide back a few spots, but was zapped out of the running completely, it causes one to wonder if “Wasted” will be give the same treatment or whether it will enter the Top 20 at all.

While Carrie Underwood’s videos have dropped off the map completely as far as CMT, VH1, and MTV are concerned, “Wasted” is still holding strong on GAC’s Top 20 countdown with the #4 slot. Additionally, GAC is still showing Carrie Underwood videos with regularity. You can catch Carrie’s videos “Wasted” and “Before He Cheats” on GAC today at the following times:

4:56 PM - “Wasted”

6:38 PM “Before He Cheats”

In other news, Carrie Underwood is now in the top slot of GAC’s poll “If you could pick one of these country stars to come over to your house for a summer BBQ, who would you choose?” beating Keith Urban out by 2.1 points.

TWIN LAKES, Wis. — Finally, Dierks Bentley got the audience he deserved.

Roughly 30,000 rowdy, ready, loud and proud country fans showed up to adore him at Thursday (July 19) night’s Country Thunder USA concert in Twin Lakes, Wis. After years of climbing up the gig ladder from honky-tonks and clubs to college arenas and county fairs, Bentley has now landed at the top. And this festival, which pulls fans from all over Wisconsin, Chicagoland and the entire Midwest for five days straight, is a nice place to land.

Bentley didn’t start his set until just before 11 p.m., so his 20-song set went well past midnight. As he put it, “Our job is to be the first guys to jump on the bar and get the party going.” His stories about life on the road gave his long list of hits some breathing room. And his vocals have been aging nicely: a little grittier, maybe, but strong and full of the distinctive sound that give his show such range. You can hear a longing in his soul on “My Last Name” and “Come a Little Closer” and yet still hear him getting his flirt on in songs like “Cab of My Truck” and “Domestic, Light and Cold.”

When he wasn’t singing, he was talking. Telling a story about judging a recent Hooter’s bikini contest in Las Vegas, he explained, “It’s just a job. It’s what we do for a living.” He went on to say that it’s difficult to explain the things you see from the stage, so he wrote a song about it. “That Don’t Make It Easy Lovin’ Me,” made the crowd feel like he’d written a song all about them. With his full band behind him, and the standard-issue black T-shirt and jeans, Bentley made the most out of every minute while playing for such a massive audience.

The seats at the festival were still filling when Carrie Underwood took the stage before Bentley, but she sang like she was doing so for a sold-out crowd. (The general admission lawn was just about at its capacity, while many of the much pricier reserved seats stayed empty all day and night.) The audience sang along on her mega hits like “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and her opening number, “Young and Beautiful.” But they seemed less sold on her sporadic tributes to Guns ‘N Roses. She spent much of her hour and a-half show dancing up and down the catwalks off the stage, touching fans and even stopping to sing to a little girl. While some of her peers are suffering from the tolls of the road, her powerful voice shows no signs of shutting down.

Before Underwood, Keith Anderson came out for an hour, doing the songs that have made him — and other artists — such fan favorites. He opened with “XXL” and “Podunk” but quickly changed gears when it was time to get sentimental on “Lost in This Moment,” the No. 1 song he wrote for Big & Rich. The highlight of Anderson’s set, though, was when he brought out a few good men from the military and sang “Sunday Morning in America” while the soldiers walked the catwalks to shake the hands of the fans. When it was time for “Pickin’ Wildflowers,” a half-dozen dancing girls in jeans and half-tanks joined Anderson on the catwalk to pack a little more heat into the already-sexy song.

Country rockers Trick Pony had a chance earlier in the day to show off new lead singer Aubrey Collins. Dressed in pigtails, short overalls, knee-high athletic socks and heavy eye make-up, she hardly fit the image of a female country vocalist — which may be just how she likes it. Collins’ voice was certainly just as non-traditional throughout their set, even though the band had some stellar talent on traditional country instruments such as stand-up bass and banjo.

Nashville Star winner Chris Young took the stage earlier with his own solid tunes like “Beer or Gasoline” and “Drinkin’ Me Lonely.” He had been to Country Thunder before when he was just 18 and opening the show for Chris LeDoux.

Newcomer Sarah Buxton had an aggressive set of her own, doing the hippie cowgirl thing with her raspy vocals and folk-style songwriting. Her rendition of “Stupid Boy,” which Buxton wrote and Keith Urban recorded, sounded nothing like Urban’s version. There’s something less pathetic and more empowering when Buxton does it her way.

But the stand-out guy during the afternoon had to be Luke Bryan. It’s hard to say who was happier: Bryan (to be sharing a festival bill with Anderson, Underwood and Bentley) or the crowd (to be hearing genuine country music full of lyrics about life). His success as co-writer of Billy Currington’s No. 1 single, “Good Directions,” immediately established his credentials as a songwriter. But then his own single “All My Friends Say” and a cover of Conway Twitty’s “Lay You Down” had fans asking over and over, “Who is this guy, and why haven’t I heard of him before?” When you find a Georgia native who’ll sing honestly about hog-wrestling, hot-wiring tractors and curing hams, you can’t let him get away.

Country Thunder USA continues through Sunday (July 22), when Kenny Chesney will be closing the festival with tourmates Pat Green and Sugarland.

Source: CMT

On Monday, July 23, 2007 ABC will broadcast “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock“. The two-hour special will feature performances from the CMA Music Festival in Nashville. This year’s CMA Music Festival took place from June 7-10, and has recorded it’s largest turnout ever with 191,000 fans showing up for the event. This will be the third time ABC has filmed and broadcast the CMA Music Festival.

Scheduled footage will include performances by Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Big & Rich, Brooks & Dunn, Sara Evans, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Martina McBride, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, LeAnn Rimes, Sugarland, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Reba McEntire, and Kelly Clarkson.

The CMA Music Festival features artists performing exclusive televised songs, but also focuses on the interactions between performers and their fans. This country music extravaganza will document the journey and experience of several fans. Some come to enjoy the music, some come get a glimpse of their favorite singer, but all leave with satisfaction. And a few lucky fans get surprised beyond their wildest dreams. You can watch ABC’s premiere of the CMA Country Music Festival on Monday at 9:00 PM EST/8:00 PM CST.

Carrie Underwood’s megahit “Wasted” managed to maintain the #4 position on GAC’s Top 20 Countdown. While unchanged from last week, the spectacular song is still holding strong behind Kellie Pickler, Keith Urban and Trace Adkins. Carrie Underwood is in the third slot for GAC’s top photo galleries behind Sugarland and Kellie Pickler, and she’s in the #3 position in the GAC poll “If you could pick one of these country stars to come over to your house for a summer BBQ, who would you choose?” behind Brad Paisely and Keith Urban.

Upcoming video airtimes on GAC for Saturday, July 21:

6:49 AM  - “Wasted”

12:20 AM - “Before He Cheats”

I earlier reported that Carrie Underwood didn’t have a decent shot at entering the VH1 To 20 countdown. I checked a few minutes ago and not only is she in the VH1 Top 20 Countdown right now, but her song “Before He Cheats” is at #15. However, “Before He Cheats” is still not in the automated playlist for the Top 20 voting, you have to manually enter “Carrie Underwood” and “Before He Cheats” into the playlist. Also it seems as if Carrie Underwood is the only in the Top 20 who’s song isn’t featured on the playlist.

Thanks to everyone who’s taking the time to head over to VH1 and voting for “Before He Cheats”. If “Before He Cheats” can reside at the #15 position with less promotion than most of the other artists on the list, then there’s a chance that the song could still go to the top spot. So If you have a few minutes, head over to VH1 and cast a vote for “Before He Cheats”, which is not only a powerful and popular song in general, but is also (as far as I can tell) the only song by a Country Music artist in VH1’s Top 20.

I headed over to the Official Carrie Underwood Website earlier out of curiosity. I didn’t get in much of a hurry because it’s been my experience that official websites are usually the last to update. Anyway, I dropped by the website and found it to be very nicely done, and pretty informative to boot. Out of curiosity I refreshed the page a couple of times to see how many different tracks the audio player contained.

From what I could tell, the page defaults at “Wasted” and “Before He Cheats” though you can change the track to “Don’t Forget To Remember Me”, “Some Hearts”, “Jesus Take The Wheel” and “Inside Your Heaven”. That’s a pretty wide selection, considering a lot of artists’ web pages only play one default track with no option to change the music or cut it off.

After browsing for a few minutes, I noticed the banner at the bottom of the page urging me to vote for “Before He Cheats” on the VH1 To 20 Countdown. So of course, I follow the link over to VH1 to check out how Carrie is doing over there. The first thing I notice is that VH1’s site is horribly confusing. The second thing I notice is that Carrie’s name is absent from the playlist of videos to vote for. At the bottom I see I can add an artist and a song to the playlist.

I typed out “Carrie Underwood” and “Before He Cheats”, then click “Add To Playlist”. Because i’m curious by nature, I refresh the page to see if the playlist retained my submission. And just as I suspected, Carrie Underwood and her song were both absent from the list once again. So I repeat the process, except I don’t reload the page. A box pops up where I can click and drag twenty songs to a section of the page and “vote”.

So I drag Carrie’s song to the number one slot and for comparison I also included a song called “1234″ by a girl called Feist. I am guessing Feist is a girl, because a female image is displayed for the video. So my ballot contains Feist, picture included, and some ace of spades looking block for Carrie Underwood. No picture of Carrie, nothing. I submit my vote, and as I suspected Carrie Underwood is still absent from the playlist.

I’ll be one of the first to admit that when I picture VH1, Carrie Underwood doesn’t really come to mind. For me, VH1 was always the place that had classics and videos by artists deemed “not heavy enough” for MTV. Then MTV went into decline and VH1 seemed to follow suit. I scanned this so-called playlist that VH1 has set up, just to see if by chance all 20 artists were of a higher caliber than Carrie Underwood.

I saw Bon Jovi, Daughtry, Goo Goo Dolls, Green Day, Avril Lavigne, and a few other artists who arguably deserve to be on the list. Then I saw people such as Elliot Yamin, Mark Ronsin, Rooney, and Paolo Nutini. I apologize for not having a clue who any of those people are. My guess is that they are somewhere between the aging rock stars, second-tier alternative artists and the hip-hop wannabe’s that make up about 90% of VH1’s Top 20.

Basically I wasted my time at the VH1 website. I’m not sure who to blame, Carrie Underwood’s Official website for asking us to vote on her video somewhere that she can’t get a decent shot at even making the list, or VH1 for allowing their standards to dwindle down to nil. Regardless, I submitted my vote, but I don’t really recommend anyone else attempting unless someone organizes a mass effort to get “Before He Cheats” in the Top 20 and sends out instructions on their ridiculously complicated (or more complicated than it should be, rather) voting process.

Honestly I don’t know why the webmaster of Carrie Underwood’s website would link to VH1 when visitors could do much better by voting for her videos at GAC where she would at least have a decent chance. While VH1 is catering to a lot of audiences that it shied away from in the past, the Country Music fan-base apparently still isn’t welcome.

The welcome mat may be out, but the door isn’t only shut, it seems to be more or less locked as well. You can visit VH1 and throw a vote for “Before He Cheats” if you want. I’d love to see her video at #1 there, or at least on the list. And by the way, don’t be alarmed if you don’t see any of the “VH1 To 20″ phrases used on the Official Carrie Underwood Website, and don’t bother with the search box either, because a reference to “VH1 To 20″ is like most everything else involving Country Music and VH1…Nonexistent.

American Idol Carrie Underwood has her Dallas Cowboys QB in hot pursuit.  According to a report in this week’s National Enquirer, football star Tony Romo wants Carrie back in his life- so he tried to make her jealous by stepping out with a Carrie look-alike!  And amazingly, it looks like Tony’s plan is working, because the former twosome are back in contact.The mag reports that Carrie dumped the Dallas Cowboys quarterback because he refused to put their relationship before his football career.  But Tony regrets making the move that ended the eight-month relationship.  And he definitely got Carrie’s attention when he was spotted with another woman- his former college girlfriend.

“Carrie was devastated when she found out that he’d been squiring around a blonde who looked a lot like her,” an insider told The Enquirer. “His plan was pretty transparent.  After all, the jealousy ploy worked with Tony when Carrie felt their romance was faltering last year and she was linked to actor Jesse Metcalfe and musician Oliver Trevena.  “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt her any less.”

Earlier this month, Tony played in the Tri-Course Amateur Gold Tournament in Racine, Wis., and was seen walking around the course with a stunning blonde.  That blonde is his old flame Crystal Kaslper, The Enquirer reports that it has learned exclusively.

“They split before Tony made it big with the Cowboys,” a source revealed. ‘And what was funny is that during the tournament everyone kiddingly referred to Crystal as ‘Carrie’.”  Ouch!   Apparently, that wasn’t so funny to Carrie.

“Carrie was crying for a solid day when she heard that he’d been seen with another woman so soon after their split- especially someone who was so physically similar,” said the insider.  Carrie, 24, called it quits with the 27-year-old athlete in early June after a passionate but rocky romance, which stalled more than once because Tony put his career over his relationship with the Grammy-winning country star.

“She decided to end it because she was tired of coming in second to The Cowboys,” continued the insider. “Carrie understands the demands of a career, but she just couldn’t tolerate Tony choosing sports over love when he felt it was convenient.  She reasoned that if a relationship is worthwhile, you make time for it.  She wanted a firm commitment from Tony, but he couldn’t deliver.”

Even though Carrie was the one who ended things, insiders say she still wants Tony- and seeing him with another woman really upset her.

After a few days of tearful soul-searching, Carrie decided to reconnect with Tony- and they have started phoning and text-messaging each other again, adds the insider.

But that doesn’t mean she’s completely ready to take him back, the report claims.  “Carrie’s holding strong.  She’s busy playing live dates, recording a new album and decorating her new house outside Nashville. And even though she’s not dating anyone new, she won’t compromise her principals when it comes to love.”

“Her career is a big deal, too, and she feels if she can put their relationship over business so can he.  Now it’s a battle of wills.  And you can bet it Tony bent just a little when it comes to their relationship, Carrie would be back with him in a second.”

Source: The National Ledger