Carrie Underwood Insisted ‘Drinking Alone’ Didn’t End With a One-Night Stand

When Carrie Underwood sat down to write her current single, “Drinking Alone,” with David Garcia and Brett James, there was one line she refused to cross. While the song might say, “Tonight all I need is a stranger / Lips with a whiskey chaser / And a corner booth kiss / To make me forget that he’s gone,” the mother of two insists that the song does not end with a one-night stand.

“I had the title, and we just kind of started, ‘What does this mean?’” she recalled, via her record label. “This is another one that I feel like the title could have gone to a very sad, emotional place, but me being me, I still wanted to have that strong kind of character in there. So, I love the fact that this is a break-up song. ‘I’m here at the bar drinking my pain away. You and me can hang out. Why should we both be lamenting over lost love separately? We’re both here doing the same thing. Let’s just do that together.’

“I love that the character – I was like, ‘I don’t want her going home with him,’” she continued. “I don’t want any of that. I just want it to be like, ‘Okay we’ll just hang out. We’ll drink. We’ll maybe share a corner booth kiss.’ But it’s just more about that night and that moment and that Band-Aid and then going your separate ways. ‘This isn’t a thing. I’m not looking to start a new relationship. I’m out of this one. Let’s just let whatever this is be what this is right now.’”

Underwood might not have wanted the song to be about two people going home together, but the video still screams sex appeal. The American Idol alum previously opened up about “Drinking Alone,” revealing it was James’ idea to make it about two people drinking alone together.

“Brett was like, ‘I feel like we could do something more with that. What if it was like, ‘drinking alone together?’” Underwood recalled on The Ty Bentli Show. “I was like, ‘Ooh, I like it,’ so we ran with it, and tried to put together this whole storyline. I didn’t want it to be like, ‘We meet up at a bar and go home together,’ because that’s not me, on any level, and I couldn’t relate to telling that story very well.

“So it was so much about both getting over somebody,” she continued. “We’re just here. This is nothing, but let’s just be miserable together, and just forget about all of that and have this fun night right here in this moment, and after that, peace out. Not a thing. It still remained kind of fun and innocent, in a drinking way. We’re drinking.’”

Photo Credit: Getty / Scott Legato