Blown Away

This chilling, vengeful tale of a young girl with an abusive, alcoholic father is the title track of American Country singer Carrie Underwood's fourth studio album. Speaking to a group of Nashville journalists, the singer discussed naming the record after this song: "The first time I heard the song, I knew I had to have it and it was like, 'That's the title!' Hopefully everyone will be blown away by the album. I think it's pretty special. Hopefully it's not just the title track but the feeling people will get when they listen to it."

Nashville songwriters Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins penned the song. The pair previously wrote Underwood's 2007 CMA Song of the Year, "Before He Cheats." Speaking with Fox17 News, Kear explained that when the pair sat down in the writing session that produced this song, their intent was to write another hit specifically for Underwood. "Carrie was about two or three singles into her third record," he said. "She hadn't announced she was looking for songs we just knew the song search would start soon. I remember we wanted a track as cool as Coldplay, melody as cool as Rihanna and a lyric like it belongs on a Carrie Underwood record." "We began to build drums and the string parts that drive the intro and verse," Kear told Radio.com. After that, the lyrics just started "leaking out." "We were searching for a highly dramatic story song," said Kear. "We started with strings and a four-on-the-floor kick drum, still with no idea what the song would be about. At one point Chris decided he wanted to mess around with sound effects and almost instantly landed on these samples of storm sounds." For Tompkins, the song's subject matter was personal. "I grew up with and around a lot of alcoholism," he told Fox17 News. "I went to AA meetings with my family and heard all kinds of things I shouldn't hear at that age. I picked up a lot of real life stuff."

Underwood said regarding the Blown Away album cover: "I felt like 'Good Girl' and several of the other songs on the album, as well as the title 'Blown Away,' allowed me to be more fierce for this one... step things up a little more, fashion-wise. Every girl loves a good wind machine. [laughs] Actually, it was cold in there that day and I did not love the wind machine! There was a backdrop and they brought chunks of grass in, and I was standing on bricks in seven inch heels trying to balance on these bricks. It was actually quite treacherous!"