Carrie Underwood is all smiles, curled up in a chair in an Indianapolis hotel room, but she's keeping the tissues close by. “Oh, my gosh, we've been in so many allergy-infested places, and everything's blooming, so pardon me if I'm sniffing a lot.”
Underwood is riding such a personal and professional high these days, not even a blast of pollen and pollution can dampen her spirits. At a time when other big hitmakers — Taylor Swift among them — are making their own splash, Underwood has emerged as the reigning Queen of Country. At age 27, she's a huge star with a multigenerational fan base that fills stadiums and racks up music sales by buying both her CDs and digital songs. Translation: She's a star with staying power.
“She's probably the best female vocalist to come out of Nashville maybe ever,” saysfellow country star and friend Miranda Lambert. “People in the industry really respect her. She's the epitome of a star.”
If Underwood goes home with an armload of trophies from Country Music Television's Music Awards Wednesday (8 p.m. ET), no one can say she didn't earn them. The singer, a previous winner of the USA WEEKEND Breakthrough Video of the Year, is nominated in three categories: Best Video, Female Video and CMT Performance of the Year.
As they might say in her hometown, Checotah, Okla., (pop. 3,481), Underwood's hotter than a two-dollar pistol on Saturday night. In April, she became the first woman to win the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year award twice; the five-time Grammy winner recently scored her 12th No. 1 single with Temporary Home, the second chart-topper from her hit 2009 album, Play On; and in all, her three CDs have sold just shy of 12.5 million copies since 2005's seven-times-platinum debut, Some Hearts. (Swift is close on her heels with 10 million albums sold.)
As a reminder of the star's not-so-distant past, she's wearing a red T-shirt from her waitressing days at Sam & Ella's Chicken Palace in Tahlequah, Okla. Completing the decidedly un-royal look: baggy sweat pants. (“They look like something you'd steal from a guy.”)Back then, the biggest crowd she had sung to “was maybe 150 people, and that was on a good night, you know?” she recalls. “They probably weren't even paying attention.”
Then came the 2005 season of American Idol, and in true Cinderella form, Underwood's life took on a fairy-tale glow.
It's easy to forget that it wasn't all that long ago that the country music establishment Underwood now dominates wasn't so accepting. When she captured the Idol title and sailed into Nashville, many felt she hadn't earned her place. Country stars of old traditionally came up the hard way, playing dives and paying dues until they got their break. They sure as heck weren't vegetarians and PETA supporters, as Underwood is.
“There were a few undertones from people,” she concedes. “Nobody ever came up to me and pointed his finger and said, ‘You shouldn't be here.' But it was always, ‘So and so said such and such.' But can you honestly imagine me spending 20 years singing in bars trying to make it? That doesn't fit me at all. And my family didn't have the money to pay for a demo. So what was I going to do? Idol was the door God opened for me, and I took my chances.”
Perhaps the most egregious, now-famous example of jealousy arrived in Faith Hill's reaction when Underwood beat her out for the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year title in 2006. As Underwood's name was called, Hill mouthed an indignant “What?” to the camera backstage in a display of diva-ness that she later dismissed as a joke. Underwood accepts her explanation. “I never believed for one second that there was any malice involved,” she says now. “People love a good catfight, even when there's really not one there.”
Ditto when it comes to her newest rival for country queen, 20-year-old Swift.
Their fans duke it out on online message boards, where things can get mean, “especially in comparing Underwood's polished live vocals with Swift's more erratic live efforts,” says Chet Flippo, editorial director of CMT and CMT.com. The singers actually have enjoyed a little hanging-out time, taking in a Nashville Predators hockey game and sharing a table at Clive Davis' Grammy party in January. But, Underwood says, “It's hard to be friends with people in the business. You're never in the same place at the same time.”
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Underwood admits she has guarded her feelings, especially in high-profile romances with Dallas Cowboys' Tony Romo and actor Chace Crawford. She says she has always been blunt about her priorities, telling guys exactly where they stood: “ ‘This is how it's going to be. You're not going to see me much, so you're going to have to love the phone, because that's the only contact we'll be able to have.' ”
Underwood admits she has guarded her feelings, especially in high-profile romances with Dallas Cowboys' Tony Romo and actor Chace Crawford. She says she has always been blunt about her priorities, telling guys exactly where they stood: “ ‘This is how it's going to be. You're not going to see me much, so you're going to have to love the phone, because that's the only contact we'll be able to have.' ”
Now, those calls will be long-distance. Underwood is engaged to Canadian hockey star Mike Fisher, 30, whom she met in October 2008. Last Christmas, he proposed with a whopper of a diamond, reported as 12 carats, though Underwood insists it's far smaller. “I have baby fingers, the hands of an 8-year-old boy. I don't think that would even fit on my finger.”
When she talks about Fisher, her voice gets dreamy. “Usually I get annoyed with people after four months, and their jokes aren't funny anymore, and their ‘isms' start to bug me. But everything he does is great. I couldn't have dreamt him up any better.”
The pair will commute between Nashville and Ottawa, where he plays for the Senators. “We're both very independent people, so if we said, ‘We're going to move in and be together 365 days a year,' we'd probably want to hurt each other.”
In the meantime, she's trying to plan a wedding. With another awards show, a summer tour in full swing and even a movie debut next year, it may be tough. Still, Underwood says, “I definitely have no complaints. Life seems really good right now. It makes my heart happy.”
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