Before her American Idol audition, an executive producer told Carrie Underwood that Simon Cowell hated country music — but she already knew.
Then 21, Underwood went ahead with her rendition of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” while trying out for the singing competition in 2005, and her heart sank as soon as Cowell cut her off.
Underwood, now 41, rewatched her audition in a video produced by American Idol, posted on Wednesday, March 5, as she prepares for her role as a judge for season 23.
The video shows Underwood, then with curly hair, working on her farm in Checotah, Oklahoma, before getting in the car to make the hours-long trek to St. Louis with her mom to audition for the show. The “Jesus Take the Wheel” singer couldn’t help but poke fun at her own nerves and appearance as she stood before the show’s original judges, Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson.
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“I would not move my hands for anything,” she said. “I think I was just trying to hold in all my emotions. Literally. Like, hold them into my body.”
Before Underwood even finished the chorus, Cowell, now 65, cut her off.
“I was like, ‘Ah, I did a bad job. He stopped me singing,’” she remembered.
But that’s not what happened. The oftentimes acerbic (or even insulting) Cowell instead told her she did a great job, remarking how he thinks the season finally found a good country singer. More importantly, he told Underwood to keep doing what she was doing — even though he, himself, is not a country music fan.
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“It did affect my song choice in my audition,” Underwood said of Cowell’s distaste for country. “I thought maybe if I sang ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me,’ it would kind of still be me and a song that I knew and loved.”
All three judges approved Underwood to advance to the next round, where she would be able to get on a plane for the first time in her life and fly to Hollywood. At the end of the video, she took a look back at her journal from that time.
“I just have to keep in mind that it’ll all be worth it and that the life I’ve started will be great,” she wrote at the time. “Most importantly, I have to remember this has all been my choice and it’s something I’ve wanted ever since I was a little girl. I know I have some great things ahead of me. Right now I’m just trying to live in the moment and appreciate it all. I never dreamed that all of this would happen to me. I love it.”
Underwood’s return to Idol was previously announced in August 2024 following Katy Perry’s exit from the judging panel. She joins Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie. In a recent first look at the season ahead, Underwood gushed that Idol “changed my life,” adding, “Now, I have the privilege of helping a new generation of artists change theirs.”
American Idol premieres on ABC Sunday, March 9, at 8 p.m. ET.
