Australian two CD pressing of the Country music superstar's 2008 album includes a bonus CD containing five Christmas songs: 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing', 'The First Noel', 'What Child Is This', 'Do You Hear What I Hear' and 'O Holy Night'. Carnival Ride is the follow-up to her debut CD, Some Hearts, which has been certified sextuple platinum by the RIAA for shipments of more than six million copies. Carnival Ride gets its title from the lyrics of one of the new songs she has recorded. "You step onto this ride called life, and it's a crazy thing you don't know anything about, but you get on it anyway," the American Idol winner said. "You do what you can to lean different directions to try and get it to go where you want it to go, but you can't stop it -- it just keeps moving. That's why Carnival Ride works as my album title. It describes the wonderful craziness that I've been through over the past couple years." Sony/BMG.
Carrie Underwood's Some Hearts, hastily made and released some five months after she won the 2005 American Idol crown, was surprisingly solid and tuneful. For her follow-up, producer Mark Bright steers her toward the big Martina McBride skies, with a plethora of strings and huge emotional crescendos. Underwood co-wrote four songs, mostly with the tried-and-true tunesmiths who made Some Hearts soar. On the torchy heartache ballad "I Know You Won't," she gives a beautifully nuanced and controlled performance, but if that song would suit any number of lush female pop stars from Celine Dion on down, "Flat on the Floor" rocks hard while preserving co-writer Ashley Monroe's Appalachian angst. Still, there are missteps: the easy tears of the unlikely war ballad "Just a Dream," a too-obvious attempt to repeat the sass of "Before He Cheats" ("The More Boys I Meet"), and the Shania-ish bad-girl-on-Cuervo stomp of "Last Name." The big payoff, then, is how much 24-year old Underwood has improved as a vocalist. How often listeners line up for this Carnival Ride depends on their attitude about country music's continual melding with pop, and how they feel about a princess upstart taking home the awards that used to go to her heroes. --Alanna Nash
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Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Carrie Underwood:
This is a great CD, I like it much better than the newest one that just came out. There are a lot of great songs on it, I really recommend it.
Carrie:
This is one of Carrie's great cd's. Money well spent. She has a wonderful voice to listen to.
great songs:
bought for my son-in-law. they were expecting a boy, but had an all american girl.
Timeless album will never get tired of hearing it:
I love Carrie underwood and love everything about her and this album my amsalut fav is "flat on the floor" and my 2ed is "just a dream" vary sad but love the way she sings this and to every one who reviewed her as bad and saying she donset know to us her voice that's a buch of CRAPE becuase she is one of the best singers I'v ever herd and anyone who has to say defrent sould keep there mouth shout because just because you don't like her that dons'et tons of other people love her and her first and seaced... more info
