One day after scoring her 16th country Mediabase #1 hit (out of 17 official country singles) with the gold-selling “Two Black Cadillacs,” Carrie Underwood took to Twitter to announce the 4th single from her 4th album, and the choice was somewhat of a surprise. Let’s hear from Carrie herself
Ok…I am so excited to announce that, hopefully, your radios will soon be blasting “See You Again!” I hope you are as happy as I am!
Check out “See You Again” here:
“See You Again” is a song that Carrie originally cowrote with David Hodges and Hillary Lindsey when they were invited to write an end credits song for The Chronicles Of Narnia: Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. As such, it’s a faith-based pop song expressing the belief that though people pass on, she will once again meet those she cares about in Heaven. The Narnia producers would choose a different song, the Golden-Globe nominated power ballad “There’s A Place For Us” for the film, but in this video, Carrie says she loved “See You Again” so much, she wanted to sing it somewhere and felt it fit the Blown Away album:
The choice of this single has spawned fan reaction that seems to fall in 1 of 2 camps:
Camp 1: Yessssssssssss!!!!! Catchy song, infectious melody, Carrie sounds amazing, she always releases a faith-based song, I don’t care that it isn’t country because Carrie’s voice still sounds country and little of country radio is really country anyway, this song means a lot to her, and maybe this will cross over to CCM formats if not maybe HAC.
Camp 2: Um, Carrie? Don’t get us wrong, we love how you pushed the envelope with “Blown Away” and “Two Black Cadillacs.” But remember how your album has all these great true country songs like “Wine After Whiskey,” “Cupid’s Got A Shotgun,” and “Leave Love Alone” and some really wonderful country/pop ballads like “Do You Think About Me,” “Forever Changed,” and “Thank God For Hometowns” and even the lovely pop/country ballad “Good In Goodbye”? How about some single love for that side of the album? And how is a song like this going to do on country radio?
In the country world, Kelli Haywood, current Director of Strategic Marketing & Brand Development at Narvel Blackstock’s Starstruck Management Group, former VP Brand Marketing at Warner Brothers Nashville and wife of Lady Antebellum‘s Dave Haywood replied to Carrie’s tweet with a touching response:
@carrieunderwood a beautiful tribute to those we will “see again” one day in Heaven – a beautiful reminder that I will see my Dad again.
Country Universe’s Kevin Coyne mentioned “See You Again” as one of his top 3 album tracks in his Blown Away blurb for Country Universe’s Top Albums Of 2012 as did Roughstock’s Matt Bjorke in recapping that site’s favorite albums of 2012. Urban Country News offers an endorsement with reservations, saying:
What pulls it over the line however, and presumably why it has become a fan-favorite, is its sincerity in wishing to bring comfort and Underwood’s confident performance.
Going back to the week Blown Away was released last May, “See You Again” was the 3rd best-selling album track behind the title track and “Good In Goodbye,” selling 15k. Blown Away the album had sold 1.346 million copies in the US as of last week and over 100k copies in Canada, also making a t5 debut on the Australian ARIA album charts and a debut of #11 on the UK album charts. Lead single “Good Girl” topped both the Mediabase and Billboard country airplay charts and has sold over 1.651 million downloads, second single “Blown Away” also topped both the Mediabase and Billboard country airplay charts for two weeks and is about to sell 2 million downloads, and third single “Two Black Cadillacs” topped the Mediabase country airplay chart after selling over 538k downloads.
How do you think “See You Again” will do as a single, and which camp do you belong to when it comes to its selection as a single?
