Carrie Underwood could spend her whole career chasing “perfect.”
Perfect notes. Perfect timing. Perfect image.
Instead, she is learning to love the little cracks.
During the Cry Pretty era, Carrie stepped into the studio as a co-producer for the first time. It was scary. Suddenly, she was not just the voice. She was the one making the calls, listening back to every take, hearing every tiny flaw most of us would miss.
For years, she picked herself apart. Was that note clean enough? Did that word sound right? Should she sing it again? Then something shifted. Working side by side with her producer, she started to hear something bigger than perfection: emotion.
Those raw notes, the shaky breath, the line that is a little less “polished” but a lot more honest…that is where the real story lives. That is where “perfectly imperfect” stops being just a lyric and starts feeling like a way to live.
Carrie Underwood: it’s about getting better all the time
That same “perfectly imperfect” idea shows up in one rare moment from 2019. At her Fan Club Party in Nashville, inside the Grand Ole Opry House, Carrie closed the night with “Kingdom,” the final track from Cry Pretty. It was the first and only time she performed the song live, singing about her husband, her boys, and their real life in Tennessee.
The vocal feels warm, a little unguarded, and completely in line with her belief that emotion matters more than spotless perfection in every line.
Kingdom (live) – Carrie Underwood @ Fan Club Party 2019
The wild part is that this tiny, one-time performance of “Kingdom” was happening in the middle of one of the biggest shows of her career. While she was sharing that quiet song with a small room of fans, the Cry Pretty Tour 360 was filling arenas with a giant eye-shaped stage, rock medleys, speakeasy scenes, and surprise fan moments on “The Champion.”