Carrie Underwood on Why She Doesn't Have a 'Squad'

"My friends are normal people – one's a baker and the other is a stay-at-home mom," she tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story

Photo: Neil Mockford/Alex Huckle/GC; Inset: Jun Sato/Getty

Country star (and new mom!) Carrie Underwood opens up about body issues, breast-feeding struggles and how she makes her marriage work. Subscribe now for exclusive family photos and an inside look into how she’s adjusting to motherhood, only in PEOPLE!

Carrie Underwood is not in Taylor Swift‘s famous squad – or any squad, for that matter.

“What’s ‘squad?’ ” she replies when asked in this week’s PEOPLE cover story if she ever wanted one of her own.

You know, like #squadgoals?

“I don’t even know squad,” adds Underwood, whose latest album Storyteller (preorder it here), is released Oct. 23. “Like a posse? I have people I hang out with. My friends are normal people – one’s a baker and the other is a stay-at-home mom.”

Despite her fame and fans, group settings, she admits, can make her uncomfortable. In the past, the 32-year-old Grammy winner has spoken about her struggles with panic attacks, and “I still deal with those feelings,” she says.

“I still get totally nervous in group situations,” she adds. “I don’t always know what to say. I can be super awkward, and I will say the wrong thing. My favorite word is ‘okay.’ If somebody says something to me that I don’t know how to respond to, or if I’m in a weird situation where I’m just uncomfortable and there’s a lot of people, even if somebody is being super sweet and cool, I’m like ‘Okay.’ I don’t always know what to say.”

For much more of Carrie Underwood’s intimate interview and exclusive personal photos, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

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