Carrie Underwood takes “Temporary Home” to No. 1
Oklahoma superstar Carrie Underwood has notched the 12th No. 1 single of her career, taking the spiritual tearjerker “Temporary Home” to the top of both the Billboard and the Mediabase/Country Aircheck country charts.
“Temporary Home” is the second chart-topper from her platinum-certified 2009 “Play On” album, following the sassy first single “Cowboy Casanova.” Sprinting to the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs in just 18 weeks, the song hit the chart summit faster than any other single this year, according to a news release.
One of seven tracks that Underwood co-wrote for “Play On” – and her fifth co-written single to top the charts – “Temporary Home” may portray poignant life moments, but the message is one that the Checotah native has always seen as uplifting.
“It’s hopeful, and each person in each story, in each different place in their life, knows that things are going to be OK,” Underwood says in the news release.
Underwood co-wrote “Temporary Home” with Nashville songsmith Luke Laird and Zac Maloy, former front man of Oklahoma City band The Nixons. She chatted enthusiastically about working with Maloy at a news conference last September at her Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame induction in Muskogee.
“I had to be a fan,” she said of Maloy. “I was like, ‘I saw you when I was in high school.’ So, it was a lot of fun for me to work with him.”
In an interview with AOL’s The Boot, Underwood said she has known Laird for years, but just met Maloy the day before they wrote “Temporary Home.”
“(I) had gotten to know him enough to know that everything was right and all the pieces of the puzzle were there. It all came together, and it was definitely one of the first ones where we said this one is definitely going on the album,” she told The Boot.
The 2005 “American Idol” winner said the idea for the song came to her in a flash.
“It just hit me like a ton of bricks, just a flood of words and stories,” Underwood told The Boot. “And all of a sudden, I thought of a little boy in a foster situation, and he knows where he’s going. And the place where he is isn’t where he should be, but he’ll get there someday. So in the meantime, he’s just walking through this space. And then the next story was, of course, about a young mom who was in a halfway house situation, really struggling, really trying, still confident that she wasn’t where she belonged, but she was headed there.”
The third verse of the song is about a man who was preparing to die.
“He’s on the way to where he’s going, he’s on his way to heaven. He’s on the way to be with God, and everything that he’s lived through was wonderful, but this earth was just his temporary home,” she told The Boot. “And when I went in and started talking to (the co-writers) about it, they were all about it. So, it came together pretty quickly … three different situations, but still very positive that they’re confident where they’re headed and where they’ve been, and they’re happy about where they’re going.”
Her fiance, professional hockey player Mike Fisher, suggested the title for the song.
On the CMT Top Twenty Countdown episode that premiered last Friday, the heartfelt music video for “Temporary Home” topped the countdown for the fifth consecutive week. The video is posted above, but I warn viewers to have a hanky handy.
The only “American Idol” winner ever to score 12 No. 1 hits, Underwood’s collection of chart-toppers began with the instant success of her post-”Idol” single, “Inside Your Heaven,” which debuted atop Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in the summer of 2005. It was the first of five No. 1s to top the BDS or Mediabase charts from her seven times-platinum debut, “Some Hearts,” with the others including the Grammy-winning “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” “Before He Cheats,” “Don’t Forget to Remember Me” and “Wasted.”
The five-time Grammy winner, reigning Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year, and three-time Country Music Association and ACM Female Vocalist winner also became the first country artist in history to achieve 10 No. 1 singles on the strength of their first two albums when “I Told You So” became the fifth consecutive chart-topper from her second album – the triple-platinum “Carnival Ride” – which also included “Just a Dream” and three hits she co-wrote – “So Small,” “All-American Girl,” and “Last Name.”
Fans also can look for Underwood as she appears on the cover of the April issue of Allure magazine, on sale now.
- BAM
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