This rocking tune finds Miranda Lambert trading lines with Carrie Underwood. Lambert admitted to People Country that she was anxious about asking the Country star to record with her. "To me, this is such a big deal that Carrie and I are singing together,"she said. "It took me forever to write the email to ask her, like I was writing to someone I had a crush on and you don''t want to mess it up."
"It took a week for her to get back to me and I was telling [husband] Blake [Shelton], ''She hates me, she hates the song, she''s never going to talk to me again, she''s probably going to change her email address!'' She finally wrote me back and said, 'I think it''s awesome, let''s do it!'"
Lambert admitted she was in a nervous state right up until the date they recorded the song. "When she came in the studio I was writing to Blake, ''I''m in over my head, I don''t know what I''ve done!''' the singer recalled. "When you respect someone like that you get so nervous. To hit the notes she hits, I would have to take off running and jump as high as I could."
The song was written by Chris DeStefano, Brett James and Priscilla Renea, who later recorded as Muni Long. DeStefano told Roughstock the story of the song. "I did this writing retreat in France for ASCAP where they get a group of writers and producers out to a castle to write together," he recalled. "And got in a room with my good buddy Brett James and our friend Priscilla Renea. We were talking and someone said 'lets do something kinda crazy' and I think I said "I've got a good feeling of doing something bad," or something like that and Priscilla reacted to it and said, 'Oh, my God, that could be the song...' and they just started rolling with it from there, like pro Tennis players."
"It was a lot of fun and the whole track, the way I built it up, it was all organic," DeStefano continued. "There was a huge room in the castle called the Sol d'en Aire, a really traditional looking castle room with a giant fireplace wood floors and about 20-25 foot high ceilings and we're doing stomps and claps and I was recording this kind of groove and it had a fun energy about it."
Lambert and Underwood debuted the song on May 18, 2014 at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards. "I'm a huge Carrie Underwood fan," Lambert said. "'Somethin' Bad' is a meshing of our styles, and there aren't many female collaborations in our format, so I'm really excited to be debuting it on the Billboard Awards."
Lambert bought Underwood the ultimate bad-girl gift of a motorcycle in honor of their debut duet.
The song was originally written as a female/male duet but Lambert didn't see it that way. "We asked the writers to rewrite it for two girls and make it Thelma and Louise themed and they did. It's so perfect for us. It's really rock 'n' roll," she explained to Radio.com. "We both have that theme on some songs throughout albums in our career. If we're going to collaborate, this is a great way to do it. She's such a great vocalist and artist and really pushes me as a singer to be better."
The music video was directed by Trey Fanjoy, who has directed several other visuals for Lambert including the ones for "
Only Prettier," "
The House That Built Me" and "
Mama's Broken Heart."
The clip features Lambert as Belle Boyd and Underwood as Priscilla Parker, a pair of jewel thieves. Fanjoy told CMT that Underwood's initial idea was to take the stereotypical male roles in film and switch things up. "We wanted to have Miranda and Carrie take on those iconic moments, instead of George Clooney and Brad Pitt, like in
Ocean's Eleven," the director said. "But then Carrie had all these amazing ideas. She wrote her own treatment, and it was the first time she'd done that. Her initial treatment - with photos - was 11 pages of ideas. And my job as a director was just to interpret and filter those ideas to fit it in the 2:49 minutes we had. Carrie had so much great imagery for me to look at. She threw her whole heart into this."
The song topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs, becoming Underwood's 13th #1 on the chart and Lambert's fifth. It was the first country song by a female duo to reach the country summit since Reba McEntire and Linda Davis spent a week at #1 in November 1993 with "Does He Love You."
