Back in 2004, a 21-year-old from tiny Checotah, Oklahoma, named Carrie Underwood decided to give a singing career one final shot. So she made the trek to St. Louis, Missouri, to audition for American Idol, then in its fourth season. Underwood made it to Hollywood, where she consistently dominated the competition until viewers ultimately crowned her the winner over Southern rocker Bo Bice. Now that she had the title, it was time to prove that her Idol success hadn’t been a fluke. And she did just that when her first post-Idol single, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” became a major crossover success, peaking atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Today, Carrie Underwood took some time to remember one of the song’s writers, Brett James, who died in a North Carolina plane crash on Thursday, Sept. 17.
Carrie Underwood Thought Brett James Was “the Epitome of Cool”
Brett James would go on to pen multiple hits for Carrie Underwood, including “Cowboy Casanova,” “Something in the Water,” and the Miranda Lambert collab “Somethin’ Bad.” But the nine-time CMA Award winner is partial to the songs that centered their shared Christian faith, such as “Jesus, Take the Wheel.”
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“I won’t ever sing one note of them again without thinking of him,” Underwood wrote on social media Friday (Sept. 19.)
The “Blown Away” songstress, 42, considered James “the epitome of cool,” someone who always insisted on sharing songwriting credits even after coming up with most of the lyrics on his own.
“He insisted that everything be equal,” she wrote. “He was just that kind of guy.”
[RELATED: 4 of Brett James’ Most Influential Hits as a Songwriter That We All Know and Love]
No Survivors In Plane Crash That Killed Grammy-Winning Songwriter
Country stars like Carrie Underwood, Dierks Bentley, and Jason Aldean took to social media to mourn Brett James after news broke of the songwriter’s passing Thursday, Sept. 18.
According to a New York Post report Friday (Sept. 19), James boarded his single-engine Cirrus SR22T with his wife and stepdaughter. After taking off from Nashville’s John C. Tune Airport, the plane crashed in an open field near Iotla Valley Elementary School in Franklin, North Carolina.
Officials confirmed that James, 57, died in the crash. Melody Wilson, 59, and 28-year-old Meryl Maxwell Wilson also perished.
“Brett’s passing is leaving a hole in all of us that I fear won’t ever go away,” Carrie Underwood wrote.
Featured image by John Shearer/Getty Images for BMI
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