Songfacts®:

• This chilling, vengeful tale of a young girl with an abusive, alcoholic father is the title track of American Country singer Carrie Underwood's fourth studio album. Speaking to a group of Nashville journalists, the singer discussed naming the record after this song: "The first time I heard the song, I knew I had to have it and it was like, 'That's the title!' Hopefully everyone will be blown away by the album. I think it's pretty special. Hopefully it's not just the title track but the feeling people will get when they listen to it."
• Nashville songwriters Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins penned the song. The pair previously wrote Underwood's 2007 CMA Song of the Year, "Before He Cheats." Speaking with Fox17 News, Kear explained that when the pair sat down in the writing session that produced this song, their intent was to write another hit specifically for Underwood. "Carrie was about two or three singles into her third record," he said. "She hadn't announced she was looking for songs we just knew the song search would start soon. I remember we wanted a track as cool as Coldplay, melody as cool as Rihanna and a lyric like it belongs on a Carrie Underwood record."
  
  "We began to build drums and the string parts that drive the intro and verse," Kear told Radio.com. After that, the lyrics just started "leaking out." "We were searching for a highly dramatic story song," said Kear. "We started with strings and a four-on-the-floor kick drum, still with no idea what the song would be about. At one point Chris decided he wanted to mess around with sound effects and almost instantly landed on these samples of storm sounds."
  
  For Tompkins, the song's subject matter was personal. "I grew up with and around a lot of alcoholism," he told Fox17 News. "I went to AA meetings with my family and heard all kinds of things I shouldn't hear at that age. I picked up a lot of real life stuff."
• Underwood said regarding the Blown Away album cover: "I felt like 'Good Girl' and several of the other songs on the album, as well as the title 'Blown Away,' allowed me to be more fierce for this one... step things up a little more, fashion-wise. Every girl loves a good wind machine. [laughs] Actually, it was cold in there that day and I did not love the wind machine! There was a backdrop and they brought chunks of grass in, and I was standing on bricks in seven inch heels trying to balance on these bricks. It was actually quite treacherous!"
• Underwood discussed the song's storyline during an interview with NPR's Guy Ruz: "The song is a story about a girl and her father," she said. "The song describes him as a mean old mister. And you can kind of make that as bad, I guess, as you want it to be. You know, the daughter wishes that, you know, she can feel a storm coming, and she just wishes it would wash her past away, and in doing so, you know, take her father along. So it's a very, you know, just deep, dark story and so visual, this song is. You know, when you hear the words and you hear the music, you can just see it all happening in your head."
• Speaking with Billboard magazine, Underwood described how she heard this song for the first time through 'terrible' computer speakers while listening to a batch of demos she'd received. She knew she had to record it straight away. "I was in the kitchen, making dinner and I played that song and I had to find my headphones so I could listen to it and get a better listen," she said. "I found them, listened to it, had chills. I called the manager up and said 'Hey, I have to have this song.' And as soon as we got off the phone, I listened to it again. It's one of those songs that I just want to listen to over and over again."
• The Randee St. Nicholas directed video was filmed in a rural area outside of Nashville and stars Underwood as the daughter of a violent alcoholic. The singer appears to be channelling The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy in her red shoes and blue and white checkered shirt before a violent storm changes her life.
  
  "I really wanted it to be a dark, Wizard of Oz in 2012 kind of thing," Underwood told CMT. "The girl in the story has been struggling with this for a very long time. She just wants a fresh start. She is at her wits end, and she gets what she wants."Underwood admitted to CMT that the pushing and grabbing between she and her father was unscripted. "We weren't originally planning to do that, but obviously in getting in there and making the video, it would make sense that father and daughter actually interact at some point," she explained. "He was such a great actor, the guy that played my dad. I felt uncomfortable, to be honest. He was that good because he was so intense and so angry."
• The song was Underwood's 13th #1 single on the Country chart.
• Underwood told reporters at a party to celebrate the song topping the chart: "There is a lot of drama in the song; it's a dark song without going too far in that direction. When I first heard the song I knew I had to sing it. When I heard it, I couldn't imagine anyone else singing it. Then I thought, 'Album title: done. Tour name: done. Check those things off my list!' It fit so much of what I was looking for."
• Underwood performed "Blown Away" and "Two Black Cadillacs" at the Grammy Awards in 2013. She seemed a little stiff at first, but when images started appearing on her billowing dress, it was clear why: images were being projected on her. "We had a dress especially made," she said after the show. "I said I should take that home and we can watch movies on it."
  
  "Blown Away" won for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance at the ceremony.
• This won Video of the Year at the 2013 CMT Music Awards.