Carrie Underwood explains it’s “Different for Girls” when you’re writing a party song like “Southbound”

Capitol NashvilleIt’s officially fall now, but there are plenty of reminders of summer still around, whether it’s the lingering hot temps or Carrie Underwood‘s party song that’s nearing the top of the chart.

The superstar from American Idol admits that even though she came up with the title “Southbound,” the song wasn’t all that easy to write.

“I was like, ‘This sounds like fun, I think. We can do something fun with this,’” she recalls. “But then you realize how tricky… it is to be a woman and write like kind of a drinking/party/boat song.”

“It’s strange,” Carrie continues. “You wouldn’t think it would be any different, but I’m like, ‘For some reason I feel like a guy could get away with saying this line that we just threw out there, but I can’t.’”

The “Love Wins” hitmaker confesses she had a similar problem with the Katie character she created for the second verse.

“We wanted to make her have a little too much fun,” she explains. “But for every line we came out with, it was like, ‘We don’t want it to be sad.’ We still had to make Katie have a little respect, but wanted to just get it out there that some people were having too much fun.”

In the end, Carrie, David Garcia, and Josh Miller came up with a song that’s a stand-out from her Cry Pretty album.

“It surprisingly took us awhile to write it, but by the end of it, it was like, ‘This is a lot of fun,’” she says. “I feel like everybody kind of gravitated towards that one when we were all done with it.”

You can vicariously sneak in one more trip to the water via Carrie’s “Southbound” video, as her hit seems poised to be her next #1.

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