Carrie Underwood’s Exclusive Inner Circle Threatens Her Career

The video for Carrie Underwood’s “All-American Girl” is out and, surprise, it’s directed by Roman White. Roman White has directed all seven of Carrie’s music videos (for those trying to do that math, that’s six studio singles plus Disney’s “Ever Ever After”). If you have to choose one video director for the rest of your life, Roman White is far from the worst choice (see Alan Jackson’s new video, “Small Town Southern Man,” for an example of some of his most excellent work). But Carrie doesn’t and shouldn’t have to make that choice, and while it’s hard to argue with the commercial and critical success of her videos, the ubiquity of Roman White is just one example of a rapidly tightening inner circle that threatens Carrie’s career.

It’s one thing for an artist to find a formula that works and stick to it. The Nashville of 2008 is profoundly formulaic, and fans and radio reward artists for consistent, above-average product and penalize most risk-taking. Record companies make the formulae of the most successful artists into a business model and Music Row plays “me too” as labels scramble to sign their own versions of the latest craze. These practices are more or less unavoidable in the commercial market and not necessarily antithetical to musical quality. My concern about Ms. Underwood is that, encouraged by two multi-platinum records, her management has embraced a formula that never really existed and is propagating that “formula” with handlers who don’t understand why it worked in the first place.

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