Carrie Underwood Biography

Singer Carrie Underwood won the TV talent show American Idol in 2005, and parlayed that success into country music stardom.

Carrie Underwood grew up singing at church and at events in and around her hometown of Checotah, Oklahoma. She was one of 100,000 potential contestants for American Idol when the 2005 season began; Underwood was a senior in college when she entered the contest, and she ended up in a tight race against Bo Bice, a southern rocker from Alabama. Underwood performed mostly country songs, a departure from previous winners Kelly Clarkson (2002) and Ruben Studdard (2003) and Fantasia Barrino (2004). In the final show of the season, on May 25, 2005, Underwood narrowly beat out Bice to become the new “American Idol,” guaranteeing her a recording contract.

Her debut album, Some Hearts, was released in November of 2005 and became a country-pop hit that won two Grammys. It included the hits “Jesus Take the Wheel,” “Inside Your Heaven” and “Before He Cheats.” Her 2007 album Carnival Ride debuted at the top of the country and Billboard charts and included the hits “So Small.” Carrie Underwood was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2008.

Her third album, Play On was released in late 2009 and included the hit “Cowboy Casanova.” A fourth album, Blown Away, came out in 2012, and Underwood released a greatest hits album in 2014. She won her seventh Grammy Award in 2014 (best country solo performance for the single “Something In the Water”) and a fifth album, Storyteller, followed in 2015.

Carrie Underwood has also dabbled in TV and film, most notably playing Maria Von Trapp in a live TV version of The Sound of Music broadcast in 2013. She also sang “Ever Ever After,” the theme to the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted.