Today's Pick

The four-time Grammy Award winner and country music star Carrie Underwood returns with today's release of her highly anticipated third album, "Play On" via Arista Nashville. It's been fewer than five years since the Oklahoma native won "American Idol," but Underwood's music career has been supernova hot since, has earned little critical praise despite moving over 10 million albums, garnering ACM and CMA awards and becoming the first Country artist in history to achieve ten No.1 singles from her first two albums.
Reality-show prodigy turned down-home diva, Underwood knew she needed to finish a new album this year. Luckily, she viewed the writing and recording process of "Play On" as a labor of love, rather than just one more thing to check off her huge to-do list. The new album is very solid from top to bottom, and it contains quite a wide range of music. The lead single from the album, "Cowboy Casanova" pop-country crossover hits has been established as the fastest-selling song in the past year of country music. While there, she also debuted three other songs included in the album, "Temporary Home," "Undo It" and "Mama's Song." The album's strongest classics track is "Someday When I Stop Loving You," a brooding tune framed beautifully by her delicate performance, while "What Can I Say," a collaboration with sibling trio Sons of Sylvia, is a simple, elegant declaration of longing. And the all-American girl even delivers a tart-tongued reading of the spunky, Shania-esque "Songs Like This."
The remaining 45 minutes, though, are more Hallmark than honky tonk. "Play On" is a tastefully-done pop pleasure, with little of the pretentious production that gutted much of her first two discs. Better still, Underwood's found new creases in her sweetly-Southern voice, an engaging instrument that's grown with each album. Underwood doesn't want you to call her music pop-country. "I'm not trying to move anywhere away from country music," Underwood said. "I love what I do. And let's say 'Cowboy Casanova' crosses over, it's going to cross over as it is - fiddles, steel and all. Growing up I never liked it when people would have a country song and then change it for a different format." "Play On," though saddled with its share of loose songwriting, is a convincing reminder of a blonde, budding talent.