Carrie Underwood’s ‘The Champion’ With Ludacris Earns Platinum Certification

Carrie Underwood has yet another reason to celebrate! Her single, “The Champion,” featuring Ludacris, was just certified platinum by the RIAA, celebrating sales topping one million. The song was used for both Super Bowl LII in 2018, as well as the theme song for the Olympic Winter Games that same year.

Underwood wrote “The Champion” with Ludacris (under his real name, Christopher Bridges), Chris DeStefano and Brett James.

“We started looking up great speeches, great sports speeches, great movies about sports,” Underwood said. “Those things that when you’re in the theater, you’re getting chill bumps when some coach is giving his team this amazing speech, and that’s what we wanted to put into a song.”

“We wanted it to be something that people could listen to when they’re in the gym,” she continued, “or before they watch the Super Bowl, or something that would work for this but also work for people in their everyday lives and just inspire and make them feel like they were ready for anything.”

The Oklahoma native, who is married to former professional hockey player Mike Fisher, was overcoming her own struggles, after suffering a broken wrist and facial injuries in a fall outside her home, when the song was released. So it was fitting that “The Champion” was released while she was working on getting her own strength back, since the song was inspired not only by athletes but by everyone who has had to overcome a challenge.

“When we were writing ‘The Champion,’ our main focus was to celebrate athletes at the top of their game, but we also wanted the song to resonate with people in their everyday lives,” Underwood explained in an interview with The Boot. “We hope the lyrics will inspire people to push themselves beyond their limits to conquer anything they are trying to accomplish or overcome. There’s a champion in every single one of us!”

Underwood and Ludacris portrayed the message of the song in the accompanying video, which showed both athletes and regular people overcoming obstacles to succeed.

Underwood was also once again the voice of Sunday Night Football for the most recent season, singing the anthemic, “Game On.”

The singer is enjoying life at home with her 3-year-old son, Isaiah, and newborn son, Jacob. She will kick off her Cry Pretty Tour 360 in May, with Maddie & Tae and Runaway June serving as her opening acts. Find dates at her official website.

Download “The Champion” on iTunes.

Photo Credit: Getty images / Kevin Winter