Carrie Underwood To Perform At 2016 Grammys — Will She Sing With Sam Hunt?
Carrie Underwood was just revealed as the latest performer at the 2016 Grammy Awards.
Music writer David Wild tweeted out the big news on January 24 after a Grammy commercial airing during the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots NFL game on CBS unsuspectingly spilled the beans on Underwood’s big performance news.
“Who else watch #NEvsDEN on @CBS was excited to hear @carrieunderwood will be at @TheGRAMMYs? [sic],” he tweeted out.
According to HeadlinePlanet, Carrie’s fellow country contemporary Sam Hunt was also revealed to be performing at the big show, putting the country stars on the same long list of performers that includes Adele, Little Big Town, Kendrick Lamar, and The Weeknd as well as Justin Bieber and Pitbull, who were announced earlier in the day.
Although Underwood has yet to confirm which track she’ll be performing at the big show next month, many fans are speculating that Carrie could be teaming up with Sam to perform her latest hit, “Heartbeat.”
Who else watch #NEvsDEN on @CBS was excited to hear @carrieunderwood will be at @TheGRAMMYs? pic.twitter.com/ROCuWHKxCX
— David Wild (@Wildaboutmusic) January 24, 2016
Although Hunt is not officially listed as a duet partner on Carrie’s new track, which is the second single from Underwood’s fifth studio album Storyteller, Carrie spoke out about the process of asking Hunt to provide background vocals on the single in a recent interview with Billboard.
“We didn’t want to be like, ‘Hey, Zach, we know you know Sam really well’ — wink, wink, nudge, nudge, ‘Ask him please’ — and put him in a weird position,” Underwood joked to the site of encouraging producer Zach Crowell to bring in Hunt to perform on the song.
The site is reporting that Sam then referred to Carrie as “royalty” when Crowell posed the question of appearing on Carrie’s latest single and eagerly agreed to lend hit voice to the hit.
“He’s very present in it but not dominating at all, which is kind of the guy’s role in the song,” songwriter Ashley Gorley added to the site.
But while we’ll have to wait until the Grammys air on February 15 to find out if Hunt and Underwood will, in fact, take to the stage together, Carrie is certainly no stranger to performing a duet at the Grammy Awards.
In 2013, Underwood took to the stage to perform the classic hit “It Had to Be You” with Tony Bennett, three years after she performed “Earth Song” as an emotional tribute to Michael Jackson alongside Celine Dion, Usher, and Smokey Robinson in 2010.
Having won eight Grammys in her decade-long career, Carrie Underwood has also performed solo on the prestigious stage on three separate occasions since 2007.
.@carrieunderwood is part of @TheGRAMMYs's Witness Greatness campaign! Get the details; https://t.co/ehRkzy9FAx pic.twitter.com/44w9UBSphC
— Carrie Underwood UK (@CarrieU_UK) January 14, 2016
The news of Carrie Underwood’s latest Grammy performance comes just days after Billboard announced that the “Smoke Break” singer would be joining Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, Sam Smith, and The Weeknd in the Grammy’s 2016 “Witness Greatness” campaign.
The site revealed on January 14 that Underwood and her fellow music superstars will “feature on outdoor billboards, wild postings and online advertisements” in the lead-up to the February music awards show, which “will celebrate the significance of the Grammys.”
Creative director Jason Karley also told Billboard earlier this month that the “Witness Greatness” campaign will encompass an array of media platforms, including TV and print commercials, billboards, and social campaigns, and will “celebrate greatness: what it takes to achieve it, how to maintain it, and the effect it has on everyone.”
Carrie Underwood’s latest Grammy performance will fall just days after Carrie hits the road for the first time in three years for her “Storyteller — Stories in the Round Tour,” which is set to begin in Jacksonville, Florida, on January 30.
“Welp, I guess I’m officially on tour!” Carrie Underwood tweeted out ahead of the first show on January 24.
Underwood then added that she was “[a]ll packed up & in some hotel somewhere…just livin’ the dream!” alongside the hashtags “#TheStorytellerTour,” “#Excited” and “#Blessed.”
[Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for TOSHIBA CORPORATION]
