Last year was a big one for country singer Carrie Underwood. She released another new album, Cry Pretty , announced the “Cry Pretty” Tour starting in May this year, and shared the wonderful news that she and husband Mike Fisher were preparing to welcome another baby boy after struggling through a number of miscarriages in the past.
The year 2019 is less than six weeks old, and it looks like Underwood’s luck won’t be changing anytime soon. On January 21, she gave birth to her son, Jacob Bryan Fisher. Two weeks later, and news has broken that one of Underwood’s recently released singles, “The Champion,” has gone platinum a year after its release.
According to Taste of Country , the football anthem has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, just days after the Super Bowl.
Underwood co-wrote the song with a number of other artists, including Brett James, Chris DeStefano, and Ludacris (under his real name Christopher Bridges). The latter also featured in the song in the bridge, per Underwood’s request.
Aside from being used for the 2018 Super Bowl, the song was also used in 2018 to promote the Winter Olympics in the U.S.
Speaking about the inspiration behind the song, Underwood explained that the group were looking up “great sports speeches, great movies about sports.”
“Those things that when you’re in the theater, you’re getting chill bumps when some coach is giving his team this amazing speech, and that’s what we wanted to put into a song,” she explained. “We wanted it to be something that people could listen to when they’re in the gym, or before they watch the Super Bowl, or something that would work for this but also work for people in their everyday lives and just inspire and make them feel like they were ready for anything.”
Underwood wanted the song to be both relevant to athletes at the top of their game and people fighting everyday battles in their ordinary, everyday lives. The pair later released an accompanying music video to reinforce the powerful message they were trying to convey.
It was also released at a time when Underwood herself probably needed something to buoy her spirits and boost her confidence. Released in January 2018, it came just two months after the singer suffered a terrible fall in her Nashville home, resulting in a broken wrist and multiple stitches on her face.
Given its newly announced platinum status, hopefully The Champion has spread the powerful message to as many other people as possible as well!