Back when she auditioned for American Idol in 2005, Carrie Underwood arrived at her Kansas City casting event every bit the homegrown Oklahoma farm girl.
She was country through and through, and had grown up in the ’90s, a time when great hit songs by female country singers were especially plentiful. But for her audition, Underwood didn’t choose to cover a country radio classic by Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Trisha Yearwood, Reba McEntire or even Martina McBride, though she told the judges during her audition that McBride was her favorite singer.
Instead, she chose to sing Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” It’s a beautiful ballad — and certainly leans toward the folkier side of country music — but this 1991 classic was never exactly a mainstream country radio hit.
Underwood had good reason to avoid the biggest country songs of the day, though.
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In an American Idol video looking back at her audition 20 years later, the singer explains that she thought a mainstream country song might hurt her chances with one particular judge.
“I knew going into my Idol auditions that Simon [Cowell] was not a fan of country music,” Underwood explains. “Even one of the…executive producers at the time was like, ‘You know Simon hates country music, right?'”
Still, she didn’t want to stray too far from her home genre.
“That’s who I am. That did affect my song choice in my audition, ’cause I thought maybe if I sang ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me,’ it would kind of still be me and a song I knew and loved. So I did my thing.”
When Cowell cut her off as she was singing, she worried that her plans had backfired — but it turned out he wanted to praise her performance.
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“And then he told me to keep being me,” she continues. “I feel like he deserves a lot of credit for that, instead of being like, ‘I don’t like country music, this isn’t what I wanna listen to,’ he saw a country artist and the value that country music has.
Two decades after that fateful audition, Underwood is back on the set of American Idol, this time as a judge. The show returns on Sunday night (March 9) with a two-hour season premiere episode. The show airs on ABC starting at 8PM ET/PT.
20 Things Carrie Underwood Has Done Since Winning ‘American Idol’
Carrie Underwood has been, well, busy since winning Season 4 of American Idol in 2005. Since the confetti fell, the country singer has released nine albums and embarked on seven tours. She’s also tried her hand at acting and launched a handful of businesses.
Over the years she’s become one of the biggest success stories to come out of the show, winning countless awards and amassing a staggering net worth of over $100 million.
Keep scrolling to see 20 things Underwood has done since her time on the reality singing competition.
