Since winning season 4 of American Idol in 2005, Carrie Underwood has certainly conquered the country music charts. Recently, she set her sights on heavier territory. The 16-time ACM Award winner scored her first No. 1 rock hit last month with the Papa Roach collaboration “Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark).” But that wasn’t the first time Underwood dipped her toes into heavy metal territory. Keep reading to see her incredible rendition of an Ozzy Osbourne hit.
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Carrie Underwood Blows Fans Away With “Mama, I’m Coming Home”
It doesn’t get much more heavy metal than Ozzy Osbourne. In fact, some say the Prince of Darkness invented the genre with his band Black Sabbath. Ozzy’s musical catalog is certainly on the opposite side of the spectrum from Carrie Underwood. But that didn’t stop the “Cowboy Casanova” singer from taking on his 1991 hit “Mama, I’m Coming Home.”
Along with late Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister and his lead guitarist Zakk Wylde, Ozzy penned the track as a tribute to his wife and longtime manager, Sharon. It became the “No More Tears” singer’s lone top 40 solo hit.
[RELATED: Behind the Meaning of Ozzy Osbourne’s Power Ballad “Mama, I’m Coming Home”]
Carrie Underwood performed the song during a May 2023 appearance on The Howard Stern Show. Her trademark rich vocals—so perfectly suited to emotionally wrought country tracks like “Before He Cheats”—seem tailor-made for the hard rock power ballad.
“K, 63 year old grizzled, head banging metal head biker here,” one user commented on a YouTube video of the performance. “F—ing outstanding rendition of that song, chills and tears.”
Carrie Has Always Been a Metalhead
Growing up in small-town Oklahoma, Carrie Underwood was reared on classic country and gospel. However, the eight-time GRAMMY winner, now 41, always had a thing for the harder stuff—to her parents’ dismay.
“I very much remember being a teenager, kind of discovering my own musical tastes, and my mom being very much against me listening to Ozzy,” Underwood told Stern. “I was also like, ‘I feel like you need to listen to some of these lyrics, because it’s not all darkness. There’s a lot of love songs and things that are a lot more melodic and sweet.’”
Featured image by Emily Cotler/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
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