Live review: Carrie Underwood wails away in L.A.

October 17th, 2012, 11:25 am ·







Tens of thousands flocked to see her at Stagecoach last year, she packed the Hollywood Bowl mere months before that, and devotees rush to buy her albums in droves when they come out. Her debut, Some Hearts, has sold more than 7 million copies; it's the fastest-selling country debut ever and best-selling country album of the last decade. Blown Away has also been certified platinum less than five months after its release.

Unlike virtually all other Idol stars – save for that other mighty belter, Kelly Clarkson – Underwood transcended her television start to ultimately dominate her field, no matter how much her music is more steeped in Heart than pure country. What she proved at Staples is not only how effortlessly talented she is behind a microphone but how long her list of memorable hits has gotten, each one thrilling her audience more than the last.

Yet they aren't exactly varied. Just as her many costume changes essentially yielded only two looks that showed off her stunning gams – the grandeur of couture (like the long ruffled skirt of feathers she wore at the outset) vs. simplified rocker-chick chic (cut-offs and a tank top at one point, skin-tight metallic-blue disco pants later on) – her music repetitiously slots into two modes. There are the fiery bits about getting wild with or flat-out avoiding an endless parade of cheating bad boys, a series of songs that all strut to the same swaggering feel – and then there are her sincere ballads, the majority of which manage to steer clear of the schmaltz and bombast to which even McBride isn't immune.


She opened and closed her eye-grabbing spectacle at Staples with pairs of the former: “Good Girl” and “Undo It” to start, “Cupid's Got a Shotgun” and every spurned woman's favorite, “Before He Cheats,” to finish off the main set. Those pieces are designed to speak for and rile up bar-hopping wanna-be cowgirls and sophisticated ladies alike, and from the deafening squeals and hoarsely shouted singalongs that erupted here, they connected as stirringly as her robust cover of Aerosmith's “Sweet Emotion,” her latest classic-rock remake (she's tackled Guns N' Roses' “Paradise City” in the past).

None of that, however, no matter how rousing, sounds half as believable out of cheery Underwood as does her raft of slow ones and the occasional detour (like “All-American Girl”) into terrain that almost feels downright country. When she wails on “Wasted,” turns nearly teary-eyed for the struggling plight of “Temporary Home” or summons inspirational cries for “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and the Randy Travis gem “I Told You So,” you sense she deeply means what she sings, regardless how little the material may apply to her everyday life.

That she pulls it off so convincingly is proof of what a remarkable interpreter she's becoming. But she's still having difficulty devising change-ups.

The most obvious attempt at something different came at the end of a mid-show segment that found Underwood floating high over the floor crowd's heads on a platform girded by wooden fencing. She crammed a half-dozen cuts into that portion, as her gimmick slowly glided from one end of the arena to the other, but only when she was about to touch down again did a new feel emerge with “One Way Ticket,” a buoyant bit of Jimmy Buffett beachside reggae, complete with confetti blasts and giant inflatable balls batted about by fans.

It was a nice change-of-pace, yet without the staging effects it might have felt cheesy – whereas pieces like “Undo It” and “Two Black Cadillacs” (a glossy '80s-heavy bash with a Coldplay piano line) would have come across just as sturdily even if they were removed from their fancy visuals.

Why is it so hard for country superstars to break out of their shells? Could it be because they really don't need to? Underwood could do more of the same for decades to come and likely still fill arenas from coast to coast, and why shouldn't she? The only people who find it mildly monotonous are those of us who aren't living and breathing her biggest hits daily.

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