Carrie Underwood's Record Label Was 'Nervous' About Her Famous Song

Carrie Underwood struck country pop gold with hit "Before He Cheats." However, during an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, she revealed that Sony Music subsidiary label Arista Nashville was hesitant to make it a single.

"This is one that I felt everybody was nervous about," Underwood told Howard Stern as the song played in the show's studio. He asked for clarification on who was nervous, to which the country star said, "Me [and] my label people, yes."

She shared that because the song was "aggressive," it seemed like a big risk to follow up her other Some Hearts hit "Jesus Take the Wheel."

"Now she's getting violent," joked Underwood.

But as we all know, It paid off. As Stern then pointed out, Some Hearts became the best-selling debut album by an American Idol contestant. It also gave Underwood her first Grammy for Best New Artist.

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Besides the success of the song, Howard wondered how literal the song's inspiration was.

"We don't take these lyrics literally, right? Like, you've never destroyed someone's car?," asked Howard. Underwood confirmed she hasn't pulled the ultimate revenge move…"yet."

When prodded further by Howard on whether she's fantasized about doing it, Underwood responded, "But that's the fun thing about music! You do get to play a character, you do get to… sing about things or write things or make music videos or whatever about things that you wouldn't actually do in your life. But it is fun to get into character and act like you would."

Howard then asked point blank, "Have you ever been cheated on by a man?," to which Underwood confirmed the song wasn't fully fictional. The host was curious about whether the singer was taken by surprise at the time by the infidelity.

Underwood explained, "At the time I was very young…I was in my 20s. I was in college. I feel like that was a very big moment where I really thought I knew this person and it turned out that I really did not know this person."