Twenty years after Ryan Seacrest crowned her the winner of American Idol Season 4, Carrie Underwood says watching this season's contestants takes her straight back to who she used to be.
Speaking on Good Morning America alongside fellow judges Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie, Underwood opened up about what it feels like to sit on the other side of the competition she once won as a small-town girl from Checotah, Oklahoma.
"Every once in a while, I'll see glimpses - and it doesn't necessarily have to do with style," Underwood said. "Just seeing all these wide-eyed youngsters coming up on stage, and it's like they're in this whole new world. People are voting for them and they're on live TV. I definitely see glimpses of myself."
She singled out contestant Hannah Harper as someone who reminded her especially of her younger self - not vocally, but in that unmistakable look of a person suddenly standing somewhere they never expected to be.
Harper, 25, a stay-at-home mother of three from Willow Springs, Missouri, became one of the season's most talked-about moments when she auditioned with an original song called "String Cheese" - written from a raw, honest place. Harper has shared publicly that she was in the depths of postpartum depression when her young son kept asking her to open his string cheese. That small, ordinary moment broke through. She said she felt God telling her that being present for her children was the greatest ministry she could have. She got up, wrote the song, and auditioned.
Underwood was moved to tears. So were millions watching at home.
That is the kind of story American Idol was built for - and exactly the kind of story Carrie Underwood understands personally. Faith, an ordinary life interrupted by something bigger, and the courage to show up anyway.
American Idol airs Mondays on ABC from 8-10 p.m. ET/PT and streams the next day on Hulu.
