‘American Idol’ Contestant Stuns With ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’ Audition as Carrie Underwood Holds Her Baby

American Idol judges were wowed by Breanna Nix’s audition. The 25-year-old Denton, Texas native brought her husband Austin, who accompanied her on piano, and their toddler son Emerson, who immediately was drawn to new judge and Season 4 winner, Carrie Underwood. 

Nix gave a stellar performance of Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel.” Alongside Underwood, fellow judges Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie were pleased. Bryan sat with his jaw dropped as Underwood, a mother of two, held Emerson.

20 years after her own American Idol audition, reflecting now as a judge on the show, the Grammy winner is stunned by her courage from that fateful date. “I have no idea how that 21-year-old Carrie was able to muster up enough guts to walk into a room and audition in front of Simon, Paul and Randy and the world,” the country music singer says in a recent video shared to her YouTube Channel.

During her audition, she performed “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt with Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson judging her. She was almost immediately cut off by Cowell almost as soon as she begins singing, which she says scared her.

“I was like, I did a bad job,” she remembers feeling over Cowell interrupting her. “He immediately gave me a compliment, and then said, ‘I’m surprised we haven’t found any good country singers,’ which surprised me. And then told me to keep being me. I feel like he deserves a lot of credit.”

She added: “In my audition, I think I was just trying to hold in all my emotions, literally. Like, hold them into my body or else, I don’t know what I thought was gonna happen,” she explains while looking back. “And I had performed on stage a lot…and I knew how to work a stage. But in a situation like that, you’re not on stage. It’s just you singing without a band, without anything. There’s not an audience in front of you. You know, you have these judges and they’re gonna decide your fate.”