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Carrie Underwood revived her iconic Heart cover on American Idol again on Sunday night (April 27), 20 years after her first performance.
The powerhouse country star took the stage on Idol’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame night to perform “Alone,” Heart’s legendary 80s anthem. Underwood famously covered the song as a contestant on American Idol in 2005 (with a dramatic, 80s-inspired hairstyle). Then-judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell applauded Underwood’s perfrmance and her “risk” in defying genre boundaries. Cowell even cast a bold prediction that Underwood would go on to win the show’s fourth season and “sell more records than ay other previous Idol winner.”
Underwood, who has sold 85 million+ records worldwide since her Idol victory, returned to the show as a judge for the first time this year, joining Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie. She donned an Axl Rose-inspired look to embrace this week’s theme, including her own Guns N’ Roses jacket. The “Blown Away” hitmaker has been reliving her 2005 Idol days in the Idol To Icon online series. Most recently, Underwood, now 42, watched her “Alone” performance and shared what she remembered about that week.
“Song choice is so difficult when you are doing something like this because just as much as people are listening to you sing it, they’re thinking about the original song,” she said as she rewatched her 2005 performance. “I remember week-to-week, you know, we would get critiqued, and it would be like, ‘oh, you know, you’re playing it so safe,’ ‘you’re being so safe with your choices,’ and it’s like, ‘well, does that matter, if I do a good job?’ And this week, I was like, ‘OK, I’m just gonna throw caution to the wind.’ And I think I even remember, like, writing in my journal how much they were not gonna like me singing this song. And being, not so much worried, I was like, ‘they’re gonna hate it. Whatever. I really wanna do it, so OK, let’s go.’ You never know what’s gonna happen.”