Carrie Underwood’s ‘The Champion’ Goes Platinum

Just one year after getting worldwide attention opening NBC’s Super Bowl LII, Carrie Underwood’s hit event anthem, “The Champion,” featuring Ludacris, has been certified Platinum by the RIAA.

Carrie said of the song, “We were asked to come up with something special for the Super Bowl. We knew we wanted the open to be as grand as the Super Bowl is, so I was really excited that NBC and Sunday Night Football kind of gave us control to be creative and go in and see what we could do. After we turned it in, they loved it so much [that] we were told, ‘The Olympics are gonna want this!’ So, that was just more incredible news because it certainly fits everything that the Super Bowl stands for as well.”

“The Champion” reached No. 1 on the iTunes Top Songs chart in 10 countries including the U.S. where it held the top spot throughout its release week then rose back to the top of the chart for four consecutive days after the Super Bowl LII opening. The song also debuted Top 5 on the all-genre Top 200 Digital Songs chart and reached No. 7 on the Spotify US Viral 50 Chart with over 151 million streams to date.

The powerful montage video for the song, directed by Jimmy Lynch, won CMT’s 2018 Video Music Award for Female Video of the Year

Meanwhile, “The Champion” is featured as a bonus track on Underwood’s critically-acclaimed, Gold-certified sixth studio album, Cry Pretty. Released in September 2018, Underwood’s first studio album on Capitol Records Nashville, debuted at No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and Top Country Album Charts and was the biggest all-genre debut by a female in 2018.

-Nancy Brooks