The forecast is stormy on Carrie Underwood's fourth album – as usual. Cloudless skies don't suit the country super­star – she's most comfortable leaning into a stiff breeze, letting a blues growl creep into her phrasing while unleashing songs like "Two Black Cadillacs" (in which a wife and mistress murder a cad) and the title track, a wind-whipped ballad about, yep, a tornado. Underwood's voice is as powerful as ever, but Blown Away tries too hard, ratcheting up melodrama with strings and effects. She's at her best in a more restrained countrypolitan mode on the weeper "Wine After Whiskey." As for "One Way Ticket," a foray into Kenny Chesney-style country "reggae," let's just say beach weather isn't Underwood's thing.

Listen to Carrie Underwood's 'Blown Away':

Related
Spring Music Preview 2012: Carrie Underwood's 'Blown Away'

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.