Key Points
- “Before He Cheats” almost wasn’t recorded due to concerns over its aggressive lyrics.
- Carrie Underwood chose to record it, and it became a major crossover hit.
- Underwood says her six-year-old has gone down a rabbit hole watching her music videos.
Carrie Underwood’s smash hit “Before He Cheats” will turn 20 years old this year, and the country music superstar has come a long way since releasing the decades-old track.
Looking back, the 42-year-old powerhouse singer revealed she and her team once considered passing on the song that found her unapologetically digging a “key into the side of” and ex-flame’s “pretty little souped up four-wheel drive.”
But, why?
“Because I was like a sweet farm girl on [American Idol] — and I hope that’s who I still am — but it was almost, ‘Maybe we don’t do this song,’” Underwood divulged while “chatting at the Nashville American Idol Season 9 press line,” according to People. “I remember even when we were talking about recording that song, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, is this too aggressive?”
She Decided to Go for It
Luckily, Underwood decided to give the song a chance, despite its feisty lyrics, as the tune showcased a different side of herself compared to her breakout song “Jesus Take The Wheel.” Written by Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear, and released in August 2006, “Before He Cheats” became a crossover hit, topping the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart and landing in the Top 10 on both the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts.
“Everybody loved it so much, we went for it and it … worked,” the American Idol judge recalled of the tune, which appears on her debut album, Some Hearts. “20 years later, we still see people perform it, and it’s a lot of fun!”
Carrie Underwood’s Children Listen to Her Music Too
What’s even more special is that Underwood shared that her two kids, Isaiah Michael Fisher and Jacob Bryan Fisher, have embraced their mother’s early catalog. She says that her youngest child already went down “the rabbit hole of my old music videos.”
“I recently was vacuuming my house, and when I turned the vacuum [off, there was] a noise coming from my bedroom, and I was like, ‘It’s music.’ And I was like, ‘That’s “Before He Cheats,’” Underwood shared. “I walk in there, and my 6-year-old is lying on my bed watching my music video. And I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And he’s like, ‘Nothing.’ Watching him discover that … he started going down the rabbit hole of my old music videos.”
About the author
Melinda Lorge is a freelance writer who recently joined the trending news team at Parade. She splits her time between Nashville and Wisconsin, and specializes in covering country music and entertainment.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source parade.com ’
