Carrie Underwood‘s album My Savior is available now!

Right from when she announced the project, Carrie shared with fans that My Savior is closely tied with her Christmas album, My Gift. It turns out that being in that musical headspace of recording music that she has a very personal connection to, and having the time available to her due to quarantining in 2020, was just what Carrie needed to move ahead with the album.

Carrie says, “We knew we wanted to do My Gift right after my tour wrapped in 2019.  So, we kind of got our ducks in a row and started working on that immediately and we’re very lucky in the sense that we were on course.  We were already in it when everything got shut down. So, we were able to finesse and finagle I feel like my mom would say.  figure out how to keep working on it and finish it.  As we were kind of in the middle of it talking about the follow up and to me it was like we might as well just go ahead and do it. Like we don’t know when the world is going to get back to ‘normal.’ So, to me just staying in this space and getting to just be inspired and sing songs like this throughout last year and this year, it was just it was such a blessing to me.”

When it came to selecting the music for the album, Carrie wanted to stay with songs and hymns that she grew up on, and were a part of her DNA from the beginning, “These particular songs for My Savior, you know, I grew up singing these in church and my church that we go to right now they play a lot of very contemporary Christian songs, praise and worship songs, and it’s great. But every once in a while, they’ll kind of throw in like a chorus or something of some hymn that I grew up with and there’s an immediate sense of home when I hear that. And that’s kind of where I was at when we were recording this. It should be like a warm hug, and I feel like there’s so many people that are like me that kind of long for that. You think back to that sense of home and your church that you grew up in with the pews. I mean it’s just one of those things that it just feels like home.”

Carrie has two special guests singing with her on My Savior — the first is Bear Rinehart of NEEDTOBREATHE.

Carrie shares the story of Bear being involved, “When we started working on ‘Nothing But The Blood of Jesus’ and we started making it feel, like it was moving and kind of picked up the tempo, you could just hear his voice on it. Like without even, you know, really thinking through it too much it was like we could hear – we could hear him on it. So, got him in to sing it. He was so great just in the studio and super easy to work with and did exactly what we thought he would do on it, which was what we were hearing all along.”

The other guest vocalist on My Savior is the legendary CeCe Winans.

Carrie says that being able to sing with CeCe was a very special for her, “I feel like one thing I will never forget about the day CeCe and I recorded  ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness’ together…is when she walked in she was like ‘oh, thank you for having me’ I was like ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming.’ And she’s like ‘I love this song so much,’ and she said ‘because He IS faithful.’ And obviously she has this incredible gift from God and uses it, you know, to give back to God, but for her to come in and just like, “Oh my gosh, you believe what you’re singing.’ It sounds so silly to say that. Of course, you should, but then to hear that it’s just like ‘Oh, yes, yeah.’ So, getting to work with her and feel the power that she has in her voice, it was just such a beautiful day and just she’s a light in the world and in music and to me in the studio she certainly was that day.”

Carrie admits, “For as long as I can remember I have wanted to record an album of my favorite gospel hymns.”

My Savior‘s track list includes…

1. “Jesus Loves Me” (instrumental)
2. “Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus” (with Bear Rinehart of NEEDTOBREATHE)
3. “Blessed Assurance”
4. “Just As I Am”
5. “Victory In Jesus”
6. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” (featuring CeCe Winans)
7. “O How I Love Jesus”
8. “How Great Thou Art”
9. “Because He Lives”
10. “The Old Rugged Cross”
11. “I Surrender All”
12. “Softly And Tenderly”
13. “Amazing Grace”

When it came to the album’s title, Carrie once again took inspiration from her Christmas album, “Well, when we were working on My Gift and kind of immediately decided to just start on My Savior, it’s so hard naming – I say this every time – it’s so hard naming an album because they were close in date release and close in content and theme, it just made sense to me that they would kind of go together and that the next album after My Gift with these hymns on it would just be kind of a continuation of that, just something that you could listen for the rest of the year while you’re waiting for Christmas to roll around again. (laughs) So, they just seemed to go together and I kind of wanted them to flow together.”

My Savior was created in one of the most unique years of anybody’s life, and Carrie is thankful on many levels for having this project to work on during 2020, “A lot of people were thrown out of their daily routines and trying to figure life out and be more introspective or kind of slow down. We were all forced to slow down. It was just a blessing to be able to walk into work and sing these songs that just felt like home.”

My Savior from Carrie Underwood is available in stores and online right now…

Headline Photo Credit: Jeremy Cowart

Additional Photos courtesy of Carrie Underwood and UMG Nashville