Carrie Underwood to begin work on fifth album following 'The Sound of Music'
Country superstar Carrie Underwood doesn't plan on slowing down any time soon. Hot on the heels of her sold-out Blown Away Tour, the singer-songwriter is switching gears to take on the iconic role of Maria Von Trapp in NBC's live production of "The Sound of Music." Slated for a Dec. 5 premiere, Underwood will be spending most of her fall preparing for the challenge, even relocating to New York City for a few months.
"'The Sound of Music' is my entire fall,” she tells Billboard. “I’ll be living in New York for a couple months. It’s all live, so it is going to take a lot of rehearsals. It will be a couple of solid months working on it for one big night."
With her current album "Blown Away" winding down with its fourth single "See You Again" at radio, she already has her sights set on her next studio project. She explains, "After ['The Sound of Music'] I feel like I can really buckle down and start working on the next album.”
While her fourth studio set is a canvas of dramatic storytelling and larger-than-life production, she's not quite sure what direction her next album will take her in. She notes of what that tour's production might consist of, "I haven’t thought about it much because I don’t know what the next album is going to sound like, but I like just standing there and singing, too. I may take a different approach, a more simple approach on the next one, I don’t know.”
On her latest extravaganza, the singer demonstrated her powerful voice with big, long notes for a newly two-hour concert. Many performers would strain under the pressure, but Underwood doesn't sweat it. “I’m too proud to drop keys,” she asserts. “I won’t do it. Maybe the older I get, I’ll write some songs in lower keys so it’ll be easier. I’ve always been pretty good as far as stamina onstage. So hopefully, God willing, that will keep the way it’s been. I try to take care of myself. That’s all. Being able to work out and stay physically strong is important ... So far, it’s worked for me. I’m just blessed at being able to be loud for long periods of time.”
After her recent tour excursion wrapped in May, Underwood took some downtime while putting together her Country Music Hall of Fame &Museum exhibit, which displays many of the tour's props and glamorous costumes. Opening on June 5, the display will be open for fans from all over the world until November. The headlining arena tour was played all over the United States, Ireland, England, Northern Ireland and Australia to mostly sell-out concerts in 2012 and all sell-outs in 2013.
Taking a look at the behind-the-scenes numbers, Underwood's third headlining venture boasts more than a few impressive stats. The nine-month tour included bringing 9 buses and 16 trucks with 89 tour personnel to each city, traveling over 605,000 total miles, state-of-the-art production of 575,424 individual LED lights in 3,000 square feet of video walls, 23,063 feet of lighting cable (which comes to roughly 4.36 miles) and 172 different colors used in the lighting. Plus, Underwood flew 150 feet above the audience at every show at a speed of .3 feet per second on a B-stage that weighed 5,890 pounds, created a tornado at every stop that took 450 CO2 tanks and 222 Nitrogen tanks, and over 2,600 pounds of confetti and 408 beach balls (during her performance of "One Way Ticket"). Backstage, 22,636 bottles of Vitamin Water and Smart Water were consumed by Underwood and her tour personel.
While her tour harkens back to the early days of Reba McEntire, she admits that she didn't model her latest after any one particular artist. “There really wasn’t any person specifically that I wanted to be like,” Underwood says. “Growing up I actually went to a lot of rock concerts, and I loved the energy that rock concerts had. So [the Blown Away tour] was me wanting that and me wanting really cool light stuff happening around me. We tried to incorporate the best of all worlds into our little stage show.”
Country Music Hall of Fame writer and editor Michael McCall weighs in, “Carrie is, like Taylor [Swift], one of those artists that has followed in Reba’s footprints in doing really theatrical shows, very huge productions. She flies over her audience on an even bigger stage than the balcony sort of thing that Reba used. And it’s a concert that’s broken down into acts, like a Broadway play would be, which is what Reba did as well.”
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! So no 5th single? That would be okay I guess
