Review by Adria DeLaune
Carrie Underwood was blown away on Sunday night…literally. The Oklahoma-born singer left nothing but wind and a cloud of smoke as she left the stage at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, after a dynamic two-hour show.
Following a spunky set by opening act Hunter Hayes, Underwood rose from beneath the stage to start her show and launched into ‘Good Girl’, which had the crowd dancing and cheering. Several more songs followed including ‘I Told You So’ and the haunting ‘Two Black Cadillacs’, before Underwood disappeared as her band played on. Several minutes later, she reemerged in a new dress and blasted through another round of songs, both new tracks from her most recent album and old favorites.
Though Underwood’s spot-on vocal performance was a force to be reckoned with, the stage behind her was equally as engaging. The setup included a giant movie screen and moving pieces of both screen and stage, as well as a levitating platform suspended from the ceiling where Underwood and 3 of her band members took an aerial tour of the arena. High above the crowd, and dressed in a Nashville Predators jersey bearing her husband’s number, Underwood sang some of the happier songs from her catalog, including the peppy ‘One Way Ticket’ before returning to the main stage and exiting for another costume change.
Hunter Hayes surprised the crowd and joined Underwood on stage during the next set for ‘Leave Love Alone’. A second major surprise guest star came in the form of Brad Paisley. Underwood, visibly shocked and on the verge of tears, hugged Paisley as he walked on stage to sing ‘Remind Me’, the pair’s recent duet. It can only be assumed that an on-screen version of Brad joins Carrie for the song on other tour stops but on Sunday night, the crowd and Underwood were treated to the real deal.
Underwood took the stage a final time for an encore and closed the show with the tour’s namesake song, ‘Blown Away’. It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who sees the show if Underwood gets an Entertainer of the Year nod at next year’s CMAs.
Which leaves us where we started…Blown Away.
If you get the chance to see Carrie on this tour, I suggest you do. She’ll be making the following stops on the Canadian leg of the tour:
October 1 – Credit Union Centre – Saskatoon, SK
October 2 – Scotiabank Saddledome – Calgary, AB
October 4 – Rogers Arena – Vancouver, BC
December 6 – John Labatt Centre – London, ON
December 8 – Scotiabank PLace – Kanata, ON
December 9 – Air Canada Centre – Toronto, ON
