The sassy Carrie Underwood is back. We last heard her lamenting faded love with Brad Paisley on their duet, “Remind Me,” but here she is taking no prisoners.
On “Good Girl,” the first single from her forthcoming untitled fourth studio album out May 1, hand claps and a rock guitar usher in Underwood”s warning to a girl that the man she thinks is a catch is a cad. It”s a fun, uptempo song that”s full of shimmies and shudders: “Better back away honey, you don”t know where he”s been,” she cautions. Heartbreak looms, even if the pretty young thing can”t see it.
[More after the jump…]
After a rock guitar break, Underwood, singing as if she”s been there with this boy before, comes back full throttle, proving, once again, that she can belt. The former “American Idol” winner is the finest singer the show has produced and she seems determined to show that here as the song slows and speeds back up again giving her plenty of opportunity to display the different aspects of her voice.
It ends with with Underwood performing a capella as she tells the good girl, one more time, to put on her “goodbye shoes.” Can”t you see it now? That”s a phrase that”s going to stick among Underwood fans. Plus, if we were she, we”d been running a promotion on our website where fans can send in photos of them in their goodbye shoes.
Like previous hit “Undo It,” there”s nothing inherently country about the song, although producer Mark Bright wisely adds in some male backing vocals during the chorus to soften it up a little. It will be interesting to see if some stations want a version without the guitar break. Regardless, this one is a smash.
Underwood, Ashley Gorley and Chris DeStefano wrote the track. Underwood debuted at the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville Thursday night. CRS is an annual gathering of radio programmers and is usually the time when big names make appearances to either thank program directors for playing them and/or debut new material to get everyone excited about an upcoming project.
What do you think?
Follow Melinda Newman on Twitter @HitFixMelinda