Carrie Underwood's rage-filled anthem, ‘Before He Cheats’, has become a staple of the modern country music canon, with the fiery, vengeful earworm seemingly always destined to be a smash hit in hindsight. It revolves around a compelling narrative, it features Underwood's powerhouse vocals and it has an absolutely killer hook.

But as Underwood reveals to Howard Stern, ‘Before He Cheats’ was met with resistance from her team when it came to choosing the next single from her debut album, Some Hearts.

The ‘Church Bells’ hitmaker explains how, after breaking out with the soul-stirring ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’ as her first major hit, to then pivot towards the darker, more rough-around-the-edges aesthetic of ‘Before He Cheats’ was viewed as a risky move.

The Oklahoma native recalls, “This one was one I feel like everybody was a little nervous about...Me [and] my label people”, adding that they thought “it was aggressive. It is an aggressive song. I just sang ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’, and now she's getting violent!”

Thankfully, Underwood managed to convince her team to go ahead with ‘Before He Cheats’, which was released to Country Radio as the fourth song from Some Hearts.

And the rest is history. The song - which was initially penned by Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear with Gretchen Wilson in mind, rather than Underwood - went on to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for five weeks, and peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. At the time of writing it has over 840 million streams on Spotify alone, and is one of the few country songs to be RIAA Diamond-certified.

When Stern asks whether the song was inspired by true events, Underwood quips, “I have not [destroyed someone's car] yet!...No, I'm just kidding...That's the fun thing about music, you do get to play a character. You do get to...sing about things or write things or make music videos...about things that you wouldn't actually do in your life. But it is fun to get into character and, I don't know, act like you would”.

Underwood goes on to highlight how ‘Before He Cheats’ has become a fan-favourite, underlining that it always draws an electric response during her live performances, “It's towards the end of the show or it's the encore, and I feel like immediately when it comes in, the whole audience just starts bumping. Like, there's this weird little...undulation thing that just starts happening. The crowd comes alive”.

Underwood then confirms that, although the song wasn't about a specific relationship, per se, she has been cheated on in the past. Underwood reflects on how formative that experience was, “I mean, at the time, I was young...I was in my 20's, I was in college, and I feel like that was a very big moment, where it was like, I really thought I knew this person, and it turns out, like, I really did not know this person”.

Since going out on a limb with ‘Before He Cheats’, Underwood has been able to strike a balance between establishing herself as a mainstream icon who isn't afraid to tell it like it is and incorporate rockier elements, as well as holding onto the faith-based roots that inspired ’Jesus, Take the Wheel’ and never alienating this side of her fanbase.

It's undoubtedly a difficult line to walk, and many other artists have struggled to appeal to both kinds of listener, without losing the other. It speaks to the sincerity and musical curiosity that Underwood has always placed at the heart of her creative process.

With the American Idol judge's last studio album, Denim & Rhinestones, arriving back in 2022, we think we're well overdue a new body of work from the ‘Blown Away’ trailblazer. We're keeping our fingers crossed there's more on the horizon from Underwood.