Carrie Underwood - American Idol turned American Superstar!

Carrie Underwood and Me.

This afternoon Carrie Underwood was in the office for a K102 album listening party for her new CD. It was a pretty difficult event to get into but I was allowed in, despite some rather loud and ridiculous grumblings from some of my co-workers. It’s amazing to me that 50 and 60 year old adults can act like middle school kids. Pathetic actually.

Carrie Underwood won American Idol a couple of years ago and released her first album “Some Hearts” in 2005 and it’s gone on to sell over 6 million copies. Her new album “Carnival Ride” is currently the number one album in the country and sold over 527,000 copies in it’s first week. Those are massive sales figures. She has won Grammy Awards, CMA Awards, American Music Awards, and tons and tons of other awards. Carrie is a massive star. Her hits include “Jesus Take The Wheel”, “Wasted”, “Before He Cheats”, “So Small”, and many more. She’s a big deal.

Anyways…before the event Carrie, her bodyguard, and one of our staff members in promotions walked past my desk. I didn’t fully realize that it was her, because I was working on some stuff at my desk. I just looked up and politely said “Hello” to them since they were literally three inches from me. All Carrie did was look at me with this half assed smirk and just kept walking. What is that about? Seriously? One of my other co-workers was near the elevators and just looked at me in disgust and then did a giant “W” with his fingers for “whatever”. So I looked him and asked if that was Carrie Underwood and he said yes it was. Can you believe it? I was dissed by Carrie freakin’ Underwood. Ugh.

So then I thought to myself…”what would I say when I met her at the K102 event?”. She already ignored me so hopefully she would be a little more friendly when a crowd was watching her every move.

At the listening party people would go up and meet her between the on-air bits and get a picture taken and have her autograph something. When it got to be my turn I walked up, handed my camera to her manager and gave her my CD booklets for her to sign. She asked me my name and started to autograph the CD booklet for “Some Hearts”. Then I looked at her and said…

“Carrie, ever since your first CD came out you have been such an inspiration. Whenever I am at the front desk and things get too hectic and the phone starts to ring off the hook, I just look at it, throw my arms up and say “Jesus take the switchboard!”.

I thought it was HILARIOUS! Absolutely one of the funniest things of all time. I cracked myself up majorly.

So Carrie looks at me and says “Really?”

I say, “Uh huh.”

Her manager then takes the picture and we smile big.

Then she looks me dead in the eye and says seriously “Does it work?”

At this point I realized she was very serious and it wasn’t going as I planned so I looked at her and said “Usually.”

Thankfully the awkwardness ended there because the commercial break was over and she needed to get back on stage for the interview.

She said it was nice to meet me and smiled and handed back the CD booklets and I went on my way.

There it is. Interesting, huh. Does Carrie Underwood really think I look at my phone and say “Jesus take the switchboard!” when it rings? I guess I will never know. She certainly seemed to take me seriously. Maybe she will talk about it in a future interview. I can hear it now….”Back in Minnesota there is a guy who gets stressed out when he has to answer the phone and he…”

Unbelievable.