Carrie Underwood‘s exciting new album, Blown Away, is in stores now, and with eight of the album’s 14 songs co-written by Carrie — including the smash first single, “Good Girl” — Carrie talks with us about her approach to songwriting and the fun of creating any kind of a mood in a song — even “dramariffic”! (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• Amid a wave of media in support of her new album, Carrie will be performing TONIGHT on American Idol, with appearances next week on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on May 9th and Jimmy Kimmel Live! on May 10th!
• Earlier this week, Carrie announced “The Blown Away Tour,” which will include a run of international dates as well as a North American arena tour set to kick-off in September with opening act Hunter Hayes. $1 from each ticket sold on the North American tour will be donated to support Red Cross disaster relief. Tickets go on sale beginning May 11th. Visit CarrieUnderwood.fm for complete tour info.

  Carrie Underwood talks about songwriting. (:49)
“It’s fun writing ’cause you just don’t know where you’re gonna end up. At least for me, when I go into a writing session, I try not to have too many parameters to follow. I don’t want to be in a box. The song…sometimes we’ll end up at the end of the day with a song that I really wouldn’t sing. Like, it just doesn’t sound like me, and, like, wouldn’t fit on the album in any way. But the day just kind of dictates where it’s gonna go. Maybe somebody else’ll sing that on their album someday ’cause the writers go and pitch the songs anyway to other people, and that’s awesome. But you just don’t know. We just go in not knowing if it’s gonna be happy, sad, excited — you know — ‘dramariffic’ or otherwise. It just happens. And that’s fun. ‘Dramariffic’ — I just made that up.”