Carrie Underwood sticks with her strength in pop country

The first rule of being an ``American Idol" is that you don't talk about being an ``American Idol."

``It's a secret society," Carrie Underwood says with a laugh.

Of course the 2005 ``Idol" victor is joking about the secret handshakes and clandestine meetings, but she says she does feel an unspoken kinship with previous winners Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino , and current champ Taylor Hicks -- even if they tend to avoid chatting about the one thing they have in common when they see each other.

``It's just like `Hey what's going on? Where have you been? What are you doing?' " the 23-year-old Oklahoma native says of the Idols when they intersect at awards shows. ``I think we all kind of understand each other and we all understand what we've been going through, but the conversation doesn't really turn that much to `American Idol.' "

That's partially because after the big tearful win and the giddy confetti drop most of the champs try to distance themselves from the television show with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. Behind Clarkson, Underwood has been the most successful ``Idol" out of the box. Coincidentally, both women are playing on Sunday. Clarkson plays the Tweeter Center in Mansfield while Underwood opens for Kenny Chesney at Gillette Stadium.

No matter how placid she appeared on the show, Underwood is a savvy girl -- she went back to get her degree, magna cum laude, following her win -- and knew exactly what she needed to do to capitalize on her momentum. Whereas several past winners and runners-up stumbled on their first albums in search of sounds that would please everyone, Underwood focused on her strength -- and more importantly, her fan base -- in pop country.

``I definitely made it clear what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, and it was just a matter of making sure we were all on the same page," Underwood says about working with manager and ``Idol" creator Simon Fuller. The pair recruited respected producer Dann Huff (Faith Hill), a cadre of Nashville songwriters and musicians, and song ace Diane Warren. ``We were really smart about it. I knew what I wanted to be. It's a good time for females in country music. I think there's not enough, and it's always nice to be a minority like that."

It's a minority that includes heroes like Faith Hill and Martina McBride, and ``Some Hearts" deftly balances the styles of those two women. There are the heart-tugging if corny ballads Underwood sang well on ``Idol" -- like first single ``Jesus Take the Wheel" -- and the chipper, well-scrubbed pop of the title track, written by Warren.

There's even a sassy Gretchen Wilson-esque number called ``Before He Cheats," that has the singer encouraging betrayed women to do a number on their exes' cars so they'll think twice about straying in the future. (A good girl to the bone, Underwood puts a disclaimer on her website saying she has never keyed anyone's car and doesn't condone it. ``I had these visions of angry women everywhere destroying their ex-boyfriends' cars and saying `It's all Carrie Underwood's fault!' " she says.)

Her commercial instincts have paid off handsomely. Not only has ``Some Hearts" sold three million copies in 31 weeks, it's still sitting pretty in the Billboard country top 5. Underwood has also loaded up on trophies, including two Academy of Country Music Awards, two Country Music Television Awards, three Billboard Awards, and even a Gospel Music Award for ``Jesus Take the Wheel." Grammy nominations seem a foregone conclusion.

All of which makes one wonder how the young singer might handle rejection. But Underwood has a keen sense of how she got where she is.

``I definitely know I'm very lucky and I know that it doesn't happen like this for everybody," she says on the phone from a Boise tour stop. ``But I try to live in the moment as much as I possibly can and not really think about `what if? what if?' because that's useless. I definitely keep my fingers crossed that everything I do turns out that well, but if not I've had a really awesome time and I've loved every second of it."

Well, maybe not the criticisms from ``Idol" judge Simon Cowell.

The knock on Underwood when she was competing on the show was that she was too stiff. The singer herself concedes the point.

``I honestly don't consider myself to be a great stage performer," she says. ``I'm a singer, that's what I do. If I were going to see me in concert, I would like to be able to sit and listen and hear me hit all the right notes, not see me jumping around stage and flying through the air and being crazy. That's me, I'm a singer."

Country star Chesney thinks the world of his young touring partner and sees her connecting with his big audiences with ease. ``Carrie fits our tour really well because she just has a good energy about her," Chesney says via e - mail. ``It is hard to describe, but you just know it when you see it."

Ann Wilson of the rock band Heart got to see ``it" up close when Underwood took part in VH1's ``Decades Rock Live" tribute to the pioneering female rockers in May. Underwood sang a duet -- and held her own -- with the powerful Wilson on the band's hit '80s ballad ``Alone." The young singer performed it to great acclaim on ``Idol."

Wilson says she found Underwood ``very sweet" upon first meeting but added that she had a ``smooth and very manicured kind of modern day Motown charm school presence about her" and a slight deer in the headlights look. ``You could tell she had really been coached a lot."

Consequently, Wilson says, ``the talk backstage was `Oh my God, who is this girl? She's really young, is she going to be able to pull it off?' Of course later when she came to actually perform, she just came out of her skin, she was just really great and confident and took it big."

Wilson thinks the ``authentic" Underwood will emerge with time and catch up with that big voice. Underwood agrees and is eager to take part in the songwriting process for her follow-up.

``I would really like to," she says. But she adds pragmatically: ``If I'm not very good at it I'm just going to say `OK , I'll let the pros handle it,' but I really would like to because that would just make everything more personal to me and give the audience a better feel for what I am all about."

Carrie Underwood with Kenny Chesney, Gretchen Wilson, and others at Gillette Stadium Sunday. Tickets are $37.50-$85.50 at www.ticketmaster.com or 617-931-2000.