On Friday, the country music singer released her first ever Christmas album called “My Gift,” which features vocals from her 5 year-old son Isaiah.
Fox News reported that Isaiah offered his voice to the song “Little Dummer Boy” with his mother. Though Underwood initially recorded the song alone, she found herself constantly thinking of her son when she sang the beloved Christmas song, which is about a poor young boy who plays his drum for Jesus.
“[Isaiah] loves to sing. He loves music. He definitely has that passion and I asked him, ‘Would you ever want to go in and sing with Mommy?’ He said, ‘Yes,’” Underwood explained. “I told everybody, ‘This might not even work. This might be a terrible idea.’ … (And) he went in and he did such a great job. He was throwing his hands up in the air and was so excited and had all these cute 5-year-old emotions just pouring out of him.”
“It was just such a proud moment for me as a mom,” she added.
Underwood’s husband, former professional hockey player Mike Fisher, was just as excited for the album.
“Oh, we were all just so excited. I was like, ‘I’m not going to send it to him right when I got it.’ I was like, ‘I’m going to go home and we’re all going to listen to it in the car.’ That’s where I always listen to my stuff that I record,” she said of the experience. “We went in the car and Isaiah got to hear himself back for the first time. It was just a great moment for all of us — sitting in my SUV listening to his sweet little voice.”
Isaiah isn’t the only guest vocalist on this album, as the singer John Legend joined Underwood in singing “Hallelujah.” Underwood said that this was a bit of a challenge, since much of the album was recorded during the coronavirus pandemic.
“At the very beginning we weren’t wearing masks yet,” she said. “After it all got shut down we said, ‘OK, we can do one of two things: Scrap it and maybe hope to do it later or we can push through.’ I feel like we had enough of the groundwork laid that I’m like, ‘Well what else am I going to do? Everybody else is in quarantine.’ We scaled everything back and just found new ways to do things. We couldn’t have some giant studio and a bunch of musicians in all the time and whatever,” she said of recording amid the coronavirus pandemic.”
Underwood went on to say that she decided to release the album in September to give people some joy in this difficult year.
“We definitely wanted to just be positive in all of what we’re doing. You look at ‘Let There Be Peace’ … I felt like we were kind of easing people into Christmas with that one because it’s not ‘Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.’ It’s just a hope for the world,” she said.
The former “American Idol” winner also talked about how she plans to celebrate Christmas with her family amidst COVID-19.
“My husband’s family; our family’s in Canada so I have no idea if we’re going to be able to go up there,” Underwood explained. “They have so many more restrictions as far as travel and stuff like that. You get there, then you have to be there for two weeks without seeing anybody and then you can see people, so you’re basically going to be there for a month. I’m not really sure what that’s going to hold for us.”
,“We’re still three months out, as we know a million things can change just like that,” she continued. “But we’ll be together, my husband, myself, our kids. Hopefully I can go see my family in Oklahoma ‘cause I really haven’t; I’ve seen my mom once this year. They’re in a little more at-risk group ’cause they’re older. I’m like, ‘I don’t want to bring our germs to you.’”
“We’re just like everybody else, going to figure it out. But it is a special time of year regardless,” Underwood concluded. “At the end of the day we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus. That’s always a good thing, no matter what year you live in, or where you are. I am more than happy to say, ‘Thank you God for the gift of Jesus.’”
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