Introduction: A few years ago, my friends at work bought me a Carrie Underwood CD for my birthday. I like old school country music but hadn’t listened to much coming out of Nashville for a few years. They asked me what I thought of her, and this story sort of poured out. Carrie, if your lawyers are reading this, let me state for the record that what follows is obviously complete fiction. It is simply an artist’s conception of what might happen in an alternate universe when somebody wins American Idol.

I’m on the subway, listening to the Carrie Underwood CD. If you’re not familiar with the name, Carrie is the newest winner of the American Idol contest.

It’s not as good as the CD I was just listening to by Diomedes, the great Colombian vallanato artist, but it’s still pretty good. Lacks something, though. I can’t pin down exactly what it is. Maybe she needs to record under the influence of aguardiente (the indigenous Colombian liquor made from anise and favorite tipple of vallanatos)!

I will go to Jersey City and buy some for her. Then I will stand backstage to meet her and spike her herbal tea…It will do her good. Put a little spunk in her country funk. And what would happen next?

First, she will add a couple of Colombians in big white hats with accordions to her band…no one will notice them at first, but as the tour goes forward and the road crew discovers the joys of aguardiente, the accordions gradually creep forward in the mix…

Then Carrie starts looking at old Selena videos for fashion cues…then she records in phonetic Spanish, becomes a big star, transfers her contract to Sony Latin America, moves to the mountains of Colombia, starts smoking the local flora, takes dance lessons from Shakira.

Her management is perplexed as she becomes the first gringa crossover star and tours Latin America incessantly, denouncing the US as imperialist and advocating the nationalization of oil…all because we slipped aguardiente into her Celestial Seasons Sleepy Time…

Then she does a sexy video, clad only in a torn Che Guevara t-shirt, of her new song, “Immigration Sí,” the hit single off her new album “Por Los Illegales.” The video is shot in red lighting, and climaxes in her passionate embrace with the hottest, most disreputable looking Vallanato star…what else have I left out? Oh yes, her next album “A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Cumbia!” Recorded in Cartagena with imported Nashville pedal steel, fiddle, and banjo players along with the cream of the vallanato guys, the album becomes a smash hit, not only in Latin America, but Europe as well.

In the meantime, to follow up her Cumbia album, she does an album of narcocorrido collaborations, “Los Tres Animales.” The cover shot features her in a barely legal bikini in the colors of the Colombian flag, her arms around a sweaty hunky guy in army fatigues in the middle of a pile of ganja-filled burlap sacks.

The National Enquirer does a feature article with the minister of the church she grew up in. “I just don’t understand what’s happened to Carrie. She was such a good girl before she went native.” Teary photos of her parents appear in the Star. OK! does an interview with the American Idol judges discussing her current antics.

Randy Jackson: “Dog, I was worried about her. She was a little too much like the girl next door to really be believable. I knew she must have had a dark side somewhere. But at least she isn’t pitchy anymore.”

Paula Abdul: “I’m still a big fan of Carrie’s. I know this period must be baffling to the American Idol audience, but an artist must be allowed to change and grow.”

Simon Cowell: “We have seen Carrie mature into a real artist. Unfortunately the artist she is now most likely to become is the kind that applies home-made tattoos in prison. I hope her management realizes that she may be destroying all that they have worked for by her titillating behavior. What’s her cell phone number again?”

Finally Carrie goes too far. She moves to Brazil and gets into favela funk, performing live at favela dances to boost her street cred. She learns Portuguese as well as the favela dialect. She dabbles in drugs and drinking, but her real vice is young street boys. The favela people embrace her, as the Spanish-speaking countries have before them. But her career is derailed by a massive lawsuit when a remix that includes a sample of her singing “You Light Up My Life” over favela beats, recorded without permission from the company that owns the original master, becomes a worldwide smash in dance clubs.

The song’s video features a naked Carrie and three favela boys frolicking in a large pot of feijoada while she warbles “You Light Up My Life ” into various parts of their anatomy. MTV bans the video, which some of her technologically minded favela fans bootleg anyway and put up on the internet. It becomes the most downloaded clip at YouTube, crashing the server daily.

However, there is a problem. The original version of the song came out on Curb Records, which is owned by Seventies music mogul Mike Curb, a right-wing fundraiser and devout Christian. Grossly offended by the whole idea, he sues everybody within moaning distance of Carrie and threatens to shut down Brazil in the bargain.

Increasingly addicted to “Los Tres Animales,” Carrie is booked on a worldwide stadium tour, but becomes very ill from the stress and drug abuse and is unable to finish the tour. The medical expenses and the resulting lawsuits from Curb and the tour’s promoters bankrupt her.

To add to her problems, she hasn’t paid any income tax for years and the IRS serves papers on her when she comes back to the states for her younger sister’s wedding. Carrie goes into seclusion in a tiny cabin near where she grew up, attempting to connect with her roots.

During the agonies of withdrawal, she sits down with her acoustic guitar and writes a double CD’s worth of songs about all she has been through. Unable to afford studio time and on the run from various process servers, she records the songs directly into a friend’s computer, then goes back into her cabin. She fasts and prays, removed from all contact with the outside world.

The friend puts up one of Carrie’s songs on her MySpace site. The track, “Life Is A Favela” becomes the most downloaded song on the internet and another smash hit.

Carrie is hot again, but has no idea. Her cabin has no phone or internet access, and her cell phone battery is run down. Carrie’s sister, back from her honeymoon, calls the IRS on her behalf and negotiates a payment plan. Her pastor fields the phone calls that come into her family’s little house, all from major recording and management companies offering to handle her legal issues if she will sign with them.

Carrie emerges from seclusion with renewed purpose and a redefined agenda. From now on, she will only perform with her acoustic guitar, wearing white. She becomes a vegan and maintains a monastic lifestyle. Her sister and pastor negotiate a new record deal with Polygram.

“Life Is A Favela,” the album of songs recorded into her friend’s computer, is released and becomes one of the top ten albums of all time. The songs are in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, appealing to worldwide markets. With the money pouring in, Carrie pays everyone—the IRS, Mike Curb, the promoters, and her lawyers—back in full. She continues to live in the tiny cabin, coming down from the hills to visit her sister, her parents, and her new niece.

Carrie tours selectively. Most of her performances are for charity. She is particularly interested in literacy and health ventures for the poor in the slums of South America, and drug rehab programs. Though once again a devout Christian, Carrie downplays her faith in interviews, claiming it is a private matter and she is no role model for anyone. She rejects all attempts by the right-wing Christian community to adopt her as a spokesperson. To the contrary, she supports a number of initiatives that help illegal aliens in America, though doing so privately.

Carrie’s next album consists of just her voice with a chorus of Latin singers and an array of percussionists playing the traditional rhythms of Colombia and Brazil. The album, though it doesn’t match the sales of “Life Is A Favela,” still sells millions worldwide, and some of the tracks live on for years in dance clubs because they are easy to drop into DJ mixes.

After several years of chastity, Carrie begins to rediscover her sexuality, having first a brief affair with one of her tour managers, then a longer relationship with a man who knew her in high school, before all of the drama started. Unfortunately, her past indulgences have resulted in extensive damage to her health, and they are unable to have children.

Carrie goes into a period of depression again and the relationship dissolves. However, her devotion to her religion, along with the help of a skilled therapist, helps her through this difficult period and she eventually rebounds. But she develops writer’s block after her recovery.

The record company is nagging her for a new album, since it has been two years for the last one. Suffering from hopeless writer’s block, a desperate Carrie reaches out to the gospel community and puts together an all-star Christmas album. Her share of the proceeds will go to Christian charities worldwide. Shirley Caesar, Fred Hammond, Rance Allen, and the Winans sign on, along with Amy Grant and many other white gospel artists.

The great Christian guitarist Phil Keaggy plays on the record and produces, collaborating on rhythm tracks with hip hop visionary Dr. Dre, several vallenato accordionists, and a veritable army of favela percussionists. The all-star group’s ten-minute version of “Silent Night” becomes yet another tremendous hit, Keaggy’s incendiary rock guitar solo and Dre’s dirty street grooves getting it airplay on stations that have never played a Carrie Underwood record before.

Unfortunately, on the way back from Christmas dinner with her family, Carrie’s car slips off the road on the way back to her cabin and she dies tragically, never hearing the success of her final project.

Within the month, Fox TV produces a four-hour documentary on her life and times, featuring Simon Cowell’s voice as narrator, and Carrie is elected into the Rock and Roll and Country Music Halls of Fame simultaneously on the first ballot. Her pastor, drug dealer, and high school boyfriend write tell-all books. Carrie’s sister and her beloved niece inherit the estate and use the proceeds to build an international college of the highest academic quality in her home town, where brilliant students with no money from all over the world come to study music, languages, and international relations.

My train stops at 34th Street. Reality intrudes.