Carrie Underwood’s all-time RIAA milestone lands — and fans are still replaying her 2017 Grammy duet with Keith Urban
OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Carrie Underwood now holds a record that places her in country-music history books.
The Recording Industry Association of America has confirmed she is the highest RIAA-certified female country artist in history — more than 95 million certified units across singles, albums and equivalents. It is not simply a statistic, it is a summary of two decades of consistency, broadcast presence, concert demand and long-term catalog value.
Underwood thanked fans and colleagues after the announcement — calling the moment beyond anything she imagined when she stepped onto the American Idol stage at age 21.
The milestone — and the moment fans keep returning to
As this certification news has spread, one specific memory continues to trend in comments, quotes and reposted clips: the 2017 Grammy Awards performance of “The Fighter.”
That night — on an LED-bright stage — Underwood and Keith Urban delivered a version of the song that was precision-tight and energetic. Urban’s guitar phrasing framed the moment like a pop-rock event; Underwood’s vocal lines lifted the chorus into something both grounded in country storytelling and contemporary in rhythm.
It was not a quiet performance — it was visual, planned, polished — and it landed as one of the most replayed duets of that broadcast season.
Why the clip endures online
The reason fans still return to it now is simple: it is one of the purest demonstrations of the way Underwood handles collaborations. She does not disappear into her partners’ style — she brings her own color to the melody without overshadowing.
Urban said it in a pre-show interview years ago — that he sometimes forgets she even came from a TV competition show — because her stage presence is fully professional, not labeled by how her career began.
The larger takeaway
This week’s new RIAA number is a celebration of inventory — of units sold, of streams, of chart weight.
But the renewed attention to that 2017 Grammy duet shows another part of legacy:
Impact is not only about sales.
It is about clear cultural memories — moments where people were excited together — and moments that continue to feel modern years later.
Underwood now holds a historic number.
And she also holds a catalog full of live performances that — even in short, three-minute award-show windows — continue to circulate as examples of how country and pop performance can meet at the same stage, with equal strength, and no compromise in identity.
