Carrie Underwood on Building Her Career: ‘I Wanna Knock People’s Socks Off’

Carrie Underwood has only a few weeks remaining on her Cry Pretty Tour 360, but she’s already thinking about what she can do next. Her current tour, which includes numerous stage elevators and special effects, is already one of the most elaborate tours ever, in any genre, but the Oklahoma native wants to do even more.

“I wanna knock people’s socks off. I’ve written more songs for this album, we’ve put more songs into this tour,” Underwood said in a video shared with CMT ahead of the Artists of the Year ceremony.

“With every tour, we just keep wanting to have bigger, better, more grand. I feel like there’s gonna be a point where I’m like, ‘I can’t go no bigger,’” she added with a laugh.

Underwood is traveling with her two children and husband Mike Fisher, which she admits is not always easy.

“I’m having a lot of irons in the fire,” Underwood acknowledged. “To have an 8-month-old and a 4-year-old, and we’re on tour. We just figure everything out as we go along. We get opportunities all the time, to go to the UK, getting to do Sunday Night Football, getting to be creative in other ways, things that are a little off of the norm of getting to do this life.”

“It is exhausting sometimes,” she added, “but I love my job so it’s worth it.”

Fisher recently spoke out on social media, praising his wife of nine years for how effortlessly she manages to pull everything off.

“If I had a dollar every time someone on tour said ‘I don’t know how she does it’ I’d be rich,” Fisher posted on Instagram, along with a video of Underwood belting out “Cry Pretty.” “I wish everyone could see how she does it! She still gets up a couple times a night with Jacob. Wakes up and makes sure everyone is fed, then works out for 90 minutes (a workout much harder then mine). Then gets ready for the show with sound check etc, then meets dozen of fans, then meets radio people and then goes out and sings her heart out for 2 hours, then gets on the bus and on to the next city for a repeat.

“It really is amazing how she does it all,” he continued. “Hard work is more important than talent in everything and she has loads of both but the short answer of how she does it is that God’s given her a crazy voice and determination (and energy) to be able to do what He’s called her to do! I love watching her do her thing and showing people the gift that God’s given her. He’s the only explanation to the question ‘I don’t know how she does it.’”

Underwood will be honored along with Dan + Shay, Luke Combs, Kane Brown and Thomas Rhett. Reba McEntire will receive the Artist of a Lifetime honor. The CMT Artists of the Year ceremony will air live on Wednesday, Oct. 16 on CMT from Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center at 8 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: Getty / Rick Diamond