Country music megastar Carrie Underwood has urged her fans to listen closely to the lyrics in her hit song,"Little Toy Guns," as there is a somber message behind the catchy tune.
"If you didn't pay attention to the lyrics at all, you would just think, 'Wow, this is like a cool rockin' song,' but the lyrics are actually quite serious," the "Something In the Water" singer told CMT. "The storyline is basically about a little girl who hears her parents arguing, and she - in her words - wishes that they were fake like plastic, like little toy guns and they didn't actually hurt and didn't hurt each other and didn't hurt her."
Because of the sensitive nature of the song's message, Underwood says it was difficult for her team to create a relevant , yet serious music video.
"Basically we're like, what do we do with this? I don't want to follow the story exactly. And I didn't want it to be too serious. I just really want it to be relatable," she said.
Eventually, video director P.R. Brown came up with a fitting story line for the video, and enlisted eight year old Grace Rundhaug to play the lead.
"I got to work with P.R. Brown on 'Two Black Cadillacs' so I just thought he would be a really great fit. So we contacted him and go, 'Do you have any more ideas?' He came up with the whole concept of this incredible storybook theme where the little girl becomes the hero," shared Underwood.
In the video, a mother and father are shown shouting at one another in the hallway while a young girl curls up on her bed to pray.
"She's caught in the crossfire / Puts her hands over her ears starts talking through her tears / She's saying, she's praying," Underwood sings in the lyrics before the chorus: "I wish words were like little toy guns, no sting, no hurt no one, just a bang bang rollin' off your tongue."
The child in the music video leaves the house and her fighting parents to wander in the woods before eventually reuniting the family in peace.
"Whenever I was trying to think of the types of things I wanted to see in this video I just saw [Rundhaug's] face," she said. "She'd be the perfect little girl in the song, in the video."
Underwood, who recently had her first child with her husband, Mike Fisher, often references the power of prayer and faith amid trials in her songs. In 2005, the singer rose to fame with the single, "Jesus, Take the Wheel," and topped charts in 2014 with the overtly Christian song, "Somethin' in the Water." You can hear both "Little Toy Guns" and "Something In the Water on Underwood's Greatest Hits album.
