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The story behind one of Carrie Underwood’s latest songs from her new album…  Here’s a clip from USA Today on the topic:

She’s even better friends with Mike Fisher, a center for the NHL’s Ottawa Senators. They’ve been dating about a year. But just because Play On features a song in which a woman tells her mother “Giving me away is not goodbye” doesn’t mean that Underwood has immediate plans to change her last name. She points out that she wrote the song with Idol’s Kara DioGuardi, who wed in July.

“In my case, many years down the road, when I get married” – Underwood chuckles – “if I get married, to whomever it might be, it’ll be really tough on my mother,” she says.

Fisher did contribute to Play On, suggesting the title for one of its songs. The idea came from a devotional study of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life that the couple did together.

“In the book, he talks about this being our temporary home, that we need to do what we can here but remember that this is literally a stop,” Underwood says. “We’re headed someplace else.”

So Fisher suggested Underwood write a song called Temporary Home. Her initial reaction? “I was like: ‘Stick to hockey. I’ll stick to songwriting.’ ”

But the idea grew on Underwood. She wrote a ballad, with verses depicting a boy in a foster home, a single mother in a halfway house and a man in a hospital bed. She worked with Last Name co-writer Luke Laird and Zac Maloy, another Oklahoman.