Photo: ABC
Carrie Underwood said she sees “glimpses” of herself when she watches current contestants on American Idol.
Underwood, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie spoke about the current season of the show on Good Morning America on Tuesday morning (March 24), just as the competition arrives at the top 20 contestants. Underwood returned to Idol for her first season as a judge last year, two decades after host Ryan Seacrest crowned her the winner of the fourth season in 2005.
“Every once in a while, I’ll see glimpses, and it doesn’t really necessarily have to do with style,” Underwood explained on GMA. “But just in seeing all these wide-eyed youngsters coming up on stage, and it’s like they’re in this whole new world, and people are voting for them and they’re on live TV. I definitely see glimpses of myself.
“I told Hannah Harper that she reminded me of me, and she’s got her own style going on," she continued. "I didn’t mean it in a vocal way at all. But just in that, you know, you’re living your normal life, and then now you’re on stage, and she just seemed nervous, and I just remember being there thinking like, ‘what do I do on this stage?’
Harper, 25, a stay-at-home mother of three from Willow Springs, Missouri, went viral when she auditioned with an original ballad called “String Cheese.” She shared her vulnerable story about experiencing postpartum depression after welcoming her youngest child. Harper remembered as she told the story behind the song, “my son kept coming up to me. He said, ‘mom, open this. ..open my cheese.’ I’m like, ‘leave me alone with the daggum cheese!’
“And I finally opened his cheese, and when I did, I realized that God had put me in that place, and that where I was in my house was the biggest ministry that I could ever have, and being a mom,” Harper said. “So, I gathered myself, and I got up off the couch, and I quit throwing a pity party and I realized that that was exactly what I wanted. And I kind of kicked the postpartum depression in the butt, and I said ‘I ain’t doing it.’ So, I wrote this song called ‘String Cheese.’”
The song moved Underwood to tears, and deeply resonated with many mothers — and other artists — watching the audition. Richie said on Good Morning America, when asked about the viral moment early in Harper’s Idol run, “there’s no such thing as too hot… get our attention as fast as you can.”
American Idol airs on ABC on Monday nights from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET/PT. It’s available to stream the next day on Hulu. Watch the full Good Morning America interview below.
Bryan is part of the star-studded lineup of the 2026 iHeartCountry Festival. The show also includes Carly Pearce, Kane Brown, Parker McCollum, Riley Green, Shaboozey, Dylan Scott, Russell Dickerson, Gretchen Wilson, Chase Matthew and Lauren Alaina. iHeartRadio's Bobby Bones is returning as the event’s host. The show will take place on May 2 at Moody Center in Austin, Texas. Tickets to the show are available as of January 23. Fans across the country will be able to catch all the action as the 2026 iHeartCountry Festival will be broadcast live across iHeartCountry stations nationwide and the free iHeartRadio app on Saturday, May 2nd at 8pm ET/5pm PT (7pm CT).