Carrie Underwood Raises Surprising Amount for Charity With Easter Concert

Country superstar Carrie Underwood is giving back this holiday season, raising a huge amount of money with her livestream concert on Easter. Filmed at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Underwood performed songs from her new gospel album, My Savior, and as of 1:30 p.m. ET on Sunday has raised $68,053 for the charity Save the Children. Gospel legend CeCe Winans and NEEDTOBREATHE frontman Bear Rinehart appeared as special guests.

The concert streamed live on her Facebook on Sunday afternoon and is available on her Facebook profile for free for the next 48 hours. All the donations went to Save the Children, which “works in over 100 countries to make sure children all over the world grow up healthy, educated and safe.”

“It means so much to be able to bring this event to people in their homes on a day that holds so much meaning for us spiritually and to be able to raise much-needed funds and awareness for the incredible work of Save the Children as we celebrate the importance of family,” Underwood explained in a press release.

Underwood revealed in December that she was releasing an album of hymns, citing her lifetime of religion as her motivator. “I feel like you guys have kind of been asking me for a while to make an album like that because I’ve been lucky enough to do songs like that here and there along the way in my career. So that’s what I did,” she explained. “It’s just been such a blessing to make music like this, music that is near and dear to my heart. I hope you guys enjoy listening to it as much as I loved making it.”

Underwood also did an Instagram Live where she revealed that songs like “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art” were songs that have been a part of her for her entire life. “I’ve wanted to make this album my whole life. I’ve been talking about it for years,” she said to her viewers. “So often, music shifts and changes and you have new sounds and new subjects to sing about, but these songs have truly lasted the test of time. Some of them are hundreds of years old, they’re just beautiful. I sang them growing up and my parents sang them growing up and now we want kids now to sing them growing up and just to be a part of trying to keep these songs alive, it’s beautiful and it’s hopefully timeless.”