Carnival Ride is the second studio album by American country music artist Carrie Underwood.
[1][2] On this album, Underwood was more involved in the songwriting process; she set up a writers' retreat at Nashville's famed Ryman Auditorium to collaborate with Music Row tunesmiths such as Hillary Lindsey, Craig Wiseman, Rivers Rutherford, and Gordie Sampson.
[3] Carnival Ride debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling over 527,000 copies and achieving one of the biggest ever first-week sales by a female artist.
Underwood explained the meaning behind the album's title and theme, saying: 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.
That’s why Carnival Ride works as my album title, because it describes the wonderful craziness that I’ve been through over the past couple years.
"Flat on the Floor" was previously cut by singer Katrina Elam on her unreleased 2007 album Turn Me Up, and was a number 52 hit on the country charts for her that year.
"I Told You So" is a cover of a song previously cut by Randy Travis on his 1988 number one album Always & Forever.
Underwood and Travis released "I Told You So" as a duet single on iTunes, and they also performed it on the results show of the eighth season of American Idol during the Grand Ole Opry week.
About the track, "I Know You Won't", Underwood said, "You get different feelings from different songs, and that one always just felt soft and vulnerable.
‘All-American Girl’ doesn't ever come down, really.”[5] She also admitted to having more creative control for this album, saying, "I was in the studio whether we were recording or not.
The song also won Underwood her third consecutive win for Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance category.
[12] The fourth single, "Just a Dream", reached Number One on the country charts for the chart week of November 8, 2008 and stayed there for 2 weeks, thus making Underwood the first solo female artist to pull four number one's from one album since Shania Twain did it with The Woman in Me.
The song also gave Underwood her fourth consecutive nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
It became Underwood's fourth top 10 all-genre hit, peaking at number nine on the U.S Billboard Hot 100.
"[16] USA Today also praised the album for its versatility saying "The songs call for vulnerability ("You Won’t Find This"), urgency ("Flat on the Floor"), sympathy ("Crazy Dreams", her co-written salute to “the hairbrush singers and dashboard drummers” from whose ranks she sprang), humor ("The More Boys I Meet," the tag line of which goes “The more I love my dog”) and extreme role-playing ('Last Name's saga of a bar pickup that turns into an impulsive Vegas marriage).
She goes for the girl-next-door cred long since given up by Faith Hill in uptempo gems like “The More Boys I Meet” (“The more I love my dog”).
"[24] The Boston Herald gave the album a B, and claimed, "Underwood manages enough spunk to occasionally avoid the cookie-cutter, especially with the curious beat-box-meets-banjo arrangement of "Get Out of This Town" and "Just a Dream," a bona fide [tearjerker] about a young war widow.
"[17] Slant gave a negative review, criticizing both the songwriting and Underwood's interpretation, writing, "Like Dion and McBride, Underwood has a rabid fanbase of people who sit in slack-jawed awe of her steely technical precision.
Carnival Ride simply doesn’t offer anything for the unconverted in terms of Underwood’s growth either as a vocalist or as an artist.