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Underwood gets fans charged up

She was sometimes shrill and her sparkly outfits were off-putting. Yet the screams of her devoted fans and the sight of those young girls in their Stetson-wearing glory made one thing clear (with apologies to Elvis Presley): 50 million pink-cowboy-hat-wearing Carrie Underwood fans can't be wrong.

Carrie Underwood : Sometimes shrill, sometimes torrid and tender. Always a hit with the near-capacity crowd. MATT SAYLES /Invision
Carrie Underwood : Sometimes shrill, sometimes torrid and tender. Always a hit with the near-capacity crowd. MATT SAYLES /InvisionRead more

She was sometimes shrill and her sparkly outfits were off-putting. Yet the screams of her devoted fans and the sight of those young girls in their Stetson-wearing glory made one thing clear (with apologies to Elvis Presley): 50 million pink-cowboy-hat-wearing Carrie Underwood fans can't be wrong.

A near-capacity crowd of 19,500 of those fans jammed into the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night.

The blonder-than-blond country girl with the cool, clean voice has come a long way since winning American Idol's Season 4, a victory she acknowledged as her platform to fame. Since that 2005 win, she's become more theatrical. Opening with a stage topped off by a spinning steel windmill and a rear-projected windstorm, it was if The Wizard of Oz's sepia-toned hurricane was about to burst. Enter the blue-spangled Underwood, and it was Judy Garland all over again. The first tunes, the rocking hyper-twang of "Good Girl" and "Undo It," were hurried and pushed Underwood's lustrous voice into a high-pitched clangor. Several glossy faster cuts (the near advertorial "Two Black Cadillacs," an ill-advised neo-psychedelic Aerosmith cover of "Sweet Emotion") suffered from that piercing vocal tone.

Luckily, by the time Underwood hit the hard-strummed, fiddle-filled boogie of "Wasted" and the yearning, yawning balladry of Randy Travis' "I Told You So," her vocals' warm emotionalism, be it her lows or highs, was in fine fettle. That cry in her voice cut through the banjo's pluck of "All American Girl," the swoon of "Remind Me," and made the syrupy sentiment of "Temporary Home" sturdier than its softhearted disposition.

By the time she changed into dungaree shorts and hopped atop a floating, mock-porch stage with several bandmates, Underwood's voice was tender and gently torrid on brushed denim mid-tempo bubblers such as "Nobody Ever Told You." It's no easy feat swaying mechanically through the air while telling a man he ought to straighten up and fly right, yet Carrie and her crew made it seem as breezy as a Kentucky autumn.