Carrie Underwood’s ACM Awards Medley Recalls Throwback ’90s Performance [WATCH]
Carrie Underwood has still got it. The singer closed her 2020 ACM Awards medley with a cover of Martina McBride's "A Broken Wing," and almost instantly, her fans whipped out a late-'90s clip of the young Oklahoman performing the same song.
The two performances are stunning, each in their own way. But putting them side by side shows not only how far Underwood has come, but how good she was as a high school freshman in Checotah, Okla.
The emcee of the show where young Underwood performs mentions she'd been stunning audiences with her voice for some time by this point. She timidly comes to the stage in a blue dress to sing a song that was still brand-new at the time.
Here is the then vs. now, courtesy of a Carrie Underwood fan on Twitter:
"A Broken Wing" was a No. 1 hit for McBride, but is just one of several power ballads for which the Kansas-raised singer is known.
Underwood's performance at the 2020 ACM Awards spotlighted the great women of country music, also including Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrell and Patsy Cline. Quite a few of the original singers took notice of her at times vulnerable, at times demonstrative — and at times, soaring — performance:
The ACMs medley was the second that Underwood — whose new Christmas album My Gift drops on Friday (Sept. 25) — was part of at the ACM Awards. She also was named one of two ACM Entertainer of the Year winners, giving her three lifetime wins in that category.