It’s been more than 10 years since Carrie Underwood won American Idol, but she’s still the queen of high-octane power ballads that won the hearts of voting audiences back in 2005.
She was the rollicking country singer whose debut album, “Some Hearts,” went platinum seven times over. Now, she’s released her fifth studio effort, “Storyteller,” the result of three years between albums in which she celebrated her marriage and a new baby.
In “Storyteller,” Underwood leaves room to show some vulnerability, but makes it clear that she has replaced Jesus at the wheel.
Underwood’s recent motherhood gives her an opportunity to compare and contrast two sides of her musical personality. Songs like the touching parental tribute “The Girl You Think I Am” gently remind listeners that she’s happily married now and is settling down to take care of her small child. Tracks like “Renegade Runaway” show she still has her trademark spunk about her.
While the album loses its bite and deteriorates toward the end, the first six songs make it clear that Underwood’s storytelling ability and vocals are forces to reckon with.
The Louisville Sluggers from “Before He Cheats” are now left behind – Underwood’s protagonists find other methods to deal with the unsavory characters in their lives. “Dirty Laundry” features a character who hangs up an unfaithful lover’s dirty laundry stained with lipstick marks in the wrong shade of pink. “Church Bells” sees Jenny endure black eyes from an alcoholic husband before she strikes back. The cause of the husband’s death is still unknown.
Underwood’s ability to breathe fire into her story leads is impressive, to say the least. She has always been a master of portraying the wounded yet vicious female protagonist, and her ferocious singing gives depth to characters that would have remained two-dimensional otherwise.
The first half of the album showcases Underwood’s power, but the sudden switch after six songs to the soft “Like I’ll Never Love You Again” is jarring after her belting about cowgirl escapades and murder trials.
The song is a passionate and sweet piece about spending quality time with a lover. Its placement immediately after the gritty “Choctaw County Affair,” however, quickly brings the album’s energy to a screeching halt.
After “Like I’ll Never Love You Again,” something starts to feel a little off. Underwood’s voice begins to lose its bite and edge – that special quality that keeps her fans coming back for more is gone, and the plot lines from “Like I’ll Never Love You Again” onward start to lose their definition.
The sudden blurriness has a cause: In the second half of the album, Underwood shifts more toward the pop end of the country-pop spectrum.
The layered beats and synthesized loops of songs like “Chaser” and “Clock Don’t Stop” pull Underwood away from her roots, much like how Taylor Swift did in “Red.”
The sudden pop vibe weakens the listener’s once-firm belief in Underwood’s storytelling ability, which hinged on her strong vocals and country twang backed by a solid wall of guitar and drum sounds.
When supported by a more pop sound, Underwood’s stories, from breaking to making up in “Clock Don’t Stop” and reprimanding a lover’s wandering eyes in “Chaser,” lose their integrity and end up sounding more like fluff than real life.
The second-to-last song, “Mexico,” brings the sound back to the original gutsy vibe of “Dirty Laundry,” but Underwood’s talk here about guns, outlaws and escaping crimes (“Take the gun, hide the car and the money/I’ll meet you in Mexico”) doesn’t sound so believable anymore. At this point in the album, it’s too late for redemption.
While Underwood starts strongly with standouts like “Dirty Laundry,” the second half of “Storyteller” would have shone if another artist had taken over instead.
– Shreya Aiyar