That something bad coming is the end before it gets to the really good bit.

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Alfred Soto: Lapsing into the big budget spectacle country pop that she has eschewed until now, Miranda Lambert looks Carrie Underwood in the eye and doesn’t blink. Underwood, whose excellent Blown Away benefited from the explosion in good songwriting by and for women, doesn’t surprise (it reminds me of Aretha Franklin and George Michael’s “I Knew You Were Waiting For Me” for just about the same reasons). It did what it was supposed to: “wow” people at an awards night. 
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Stephen Thomas Erlewine: It’s easy to forget Miranda Lambert began her career on TV, just like Carrie Underwood. Where Underwood always seemed destined for Vegas, Lambert always has been a child of the south, so when she starts singing about something bad about to happen, there’s a feeling she has a sixth sense about shit about to go down. Carrie is all pantomime, but Miranda gives a performance, playing with her persona enough to almost sustain this a mildly embarrassing stomp which may have been more dignified if it wasn’t a duet.
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Anthony Easton: The pure pop pleasure of seeing these two women in these T-shirts — it’s fanfiction. One of the things fanfiction does is allow people to recast and liberate texts from moribund readings. So instead of Thelma and Louise running off that cliff, in a gesture of capitulating suicide, they take the car to Nashville and train a generation of radical songstresses. 
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Thomas Inskeep: I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here — did Miranda’s character kidnap Carrie’s from a streetcorner? — but I don’t care too much. I must admit I had higher hopes for this duet, mainly in the lyrical department, but it’s got a nice stompy feel (I’d love to hear what Mutt Lange would have done with this), and is awfully snappy: if anything, it’s done too soon. Miranda and Carrie are almost too well-matched; it’s at times hard to tell who’s singing which line.
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Brad Shoup: This show would’ve killed at upfronts. Both singers have killed with songs about dread anticipation; this is merely naughty. The Queen/hair metal backbeat is the main event, but when the harmonies are featured, the prospect of Underwood becoming an honorary Annie becomes thrillingly real.
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Megan Harrington: Remember that strong-jawed fellow from a couple weeks ago that thought you could major in drankin’ n flirtin’ (or whatever)? “Somethin’ Bad” is a response to him, to all he represents, to bro-country. It’s a banner wave through Nashville: girls can do it, too. The folks at trad sites seem almost betrayed by Miranda and Carrie, irritated that their response to a successful sub-genre of country was to make that same music but sung by two women instead of, I don’t know, busting out another “no, that’s my man” duet? All that matters to me is that these two sound ferocious and that their barstool reverie is believable — success on both counts. 
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Crystal Leww: “Somethin’ Bad” is a little underwhelming, a classic case of how expectations can sometimes hamper enjoyment. When two huge names like Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood team up, it feels like it should be a big summer country anthem, but alas, this sounds much more like an album cut. The song builds right right up until that big moment complete with calls to feet stomp and some chanting and that dual-sung big note, but instead of exploding, it settles back into Lambert and Underwood ominously singing about something bad coming.
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Katherine St Asaph: Stomps, shouts, scowls, screeches, but no stakes.
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