Carrie Underwood, ‘All-American Girl’ — Story Behind the Song

Carrie Underwood released 'All-American Girl' in 2007 as the second single from her second studio album, 'Carnival Ride.' The tune, co-written by Grammy-nominated songwriter Kelley Lovelace, became her seventh career Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 single and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. 'All-American Girl' became Underwood's seventh career No. 1 single, as well as her sixth consecutive country No. 1 single, and has been certified platinum, signifying sales in excess of one million units. Below, Lovelace tells The Boot about crafting the hit.

Ashley Gorley, Morgan Hayes and I wrote 'Don't Forget to Remember Me,' which went to No. 1 [for Underwood]. Ashley and I had one day with Carrie, and we had a couple of ideas we were prepared to pitch to her. She was sick and coughing, and I thought, 'God, I can't even believe she came.'

She was really pleasant and in a real good mood, so we pitched her this first thing we were thinking about, which was kind of a 'Don't Forget to Remember Me: Part 2.' It was a solid song, and we felt really good about it. We got done and she said, "Well that didn't take long. Maybe we should write another one." We were surprised, because it was a nice day, and she was sick. But she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't have anywhere else she needed to be.

We thought we needed to write something uptempo, since we already had a ballad / mid-tempo song finished. Ashley said, "We've got this one thing that could be uptempo called 'All-American Girl.'" She laughed and said, "It's not about me, is it?" We said, "No, it's about this husband and wife, and the husband always wanted a boy, but he ended up with a girl." She said, "Great, sounds like my dad!"

We started around 2:45 PM, and by 5:30 PM, we were totally done, and we never went back and changed anything. Really, if it wasn't for Carrie wanting to stay in there and write another one, we never would have written it. It really was a special day because we all three had really good chemistry. She was singing and getting in there with the melody and doing things vocally we wouldn't ever think about doing. Ashley and I walked into the parking lot and thought, "What the heck happened in there?"