In 2014, country queens and powerhouse vocal artists Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood teamed up as troublemakers for a long overdue collaboration, “Somethin’ Bad.” The song was the second single in Lambert’s fifth studio album, Platinum, which debuted at the Billboard Music Awards.
If you’ve been a country music fan for a long time, you’d know that these women both have a reputation for being badasses. In 2005, Miranda Lambert went on and gave up on love after her boyfriend cheated on her, but not before burning his house down with “Kerosene.” A year later, Carrie Underwood went for a warning to her boyfriend to think before he cheats again in “Before He Cheats” lest he wanted his car vandalized – keyed, destroyed, smashed, and slashed.
And fans knew that if they decided to work on a track together, they would deliver a legendary collaboration. And they really did.
The country-rock song “Somethin’ Bad,” which was described as the antidote to bro-country, was a power-packed one-two-punch written by Chris DeStefano, Brett James, and Priscilla Renea. It topped the charts, earning Underwood her thirteenth number-one and Lambert her fifth. It was also the first number-one hit by teamed-up solo women in more than two decades of the chart.
That wasn’t all, as it also received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.
Meaning Behind the Song
Let’s break down the badass song verse by verse, riding along with Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood’s adventure.
For You
The song is introduced by a duet, with Lambert and Underwood hyping everyone up to stand on the bar, stomp their feet, and clap as they “got a real good feeling somethin’ bad about to happen.”
Lambert then opens the story, singing how she nervously pulled up to the church but had to back it on. And then, she went home and grabbed all the cash underneath her mattress. Underwood takes over the storytelling in the second verse, saying how she ran into a girl in a pretty white dress. She rolled her window down and asked, “Where you headed next?” To which the girl replied, “ I’m heading to the bar with my money out of the mattress / Got a real good feeling somethin’ bad about to happen.”
They hit it together once again in the chorus, with their hands holding filled-up glasses of booze while throwing their head back and laughing the whole time. And then they wake up in the morning without recollection of what happened the night before. They knew something bad had happened but decided to embrace the mischief and their wild side.
Underwood continues the story as she and the girl-in-white cruise to New Orleans in the third verse. “Got a full tank of gas and the money out of the mattress / Got a real good feeling somethin’ bad about to happen,” she sings. Lambert then goes on to say how they’ll tear it up like Thelma and Louise – the best friends in the same-titled 1991 film who are out on an adventure – and if they get caught by the cops, they were gonna call it a kidnapping.
But they weren’t too bothered by it at all. They were just two girls out on the road, having fun and enjoying life in a cool and badass way.
Catch Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood as they do “Somethin’ Bad” in the video below.
