While "Cry Pretty" isn't Carrie Underwood's first release since suffering a traumatic fall in November, it's certainly the most emotional. Her accident resulted in a broken wrist and required 40 stitches to her face, and only recently has she felt comfortable returning to public life. "The Champion," which she released with Ludacris in March, served as her anthem, but in "Cry Pretty," which dropped today, she allows herself to be vulnerable, which she explains in an honest note to her fans about her return.
"The title refers to when emotions take over and you just can’t hold them back," she wrote of the new single. "It really speaks to a lot of things that have happened in the past year and I hope when you hear it, you can relate those feelings to those times in your life."
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The lyrics lay it all out on the table, and appear to be about her insecurities following her accident, but perhaps other hardships she's endured over the past year that she's been less public about.
"Oh no, you can’t dress it up in lace or rhinestones / Don't matter if you're in a crowd or home all alone," the lyrics read. "Yeah, it's all the same when you're looking in the mirror / A picture of pain, so let it flow like a river."
Ultimately, the song is about no longer holding in your feelings, and while the single came with a lyric video, I'm sure we'll see a lot of these themes in the music video — along with, fingers crossed, the singer whose face we've been missing since she retreated these past few months. Luckily, she'll be returning to the stage this Sunday to perform the single at the ACM Awards.
Check out the full song below!
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