Carnival Ride

Underwood hosted a writers' retreat at the Ryman Auditorium with Hillary Lindsey, Craig Wiseman, Rivers Rutherford and Gordie Sampson, and said she had more creative control and was involved in the studio sessions. Derek Bason recorded and mixed, Hank Williams mastered at Master Mix, and the players included Sampson on acoustic guitar and mandolin, Paul Franklin on dobro and steel, Aubrey Haynie on fiddle, Tom Bukovac on electric guitar and Matt Chamberlain and Chris McHugh on drums. The Nashville String Machine, arranged by Chris McDonald, played on two tracks. "Flat on the Floor" had been recorded by Katrina Elam, and "I Told You So" is a Randy Travis cover. The first four singles, "So Small", "All-American Girl", "Last Name" and "Just a Dream", all reached number 1 on Hot Country Songs, the first four from one album by a solo female since Shania Twain's The Woman in Me. It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 with about 527,000 first-week copies and went 4x Platinum. Metacritic scores it 72; Christgau gave one star while praising the songs she wrote, "The More Boys I Meet" and "Last Name".