📖Hymn of the Week

“How Great Thou Art” – Carrie Underwood

Every Sunday here at FishWorship, we take a moment to revisit one of the great hymns of our faith through our Hymn of the Week series. These are songs that have carried words of worship, comfort, and hope through generations, and yet somehow continue to sound just as powerful today. This week, we’re featuring a breathtaking performance of one of the most beloved hymns of all time: “How Great Thou Art” by Carrie Underwood. It’s a beautiful reminder that some songs never really grow old—they simply find new voices to help us hear them again.

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There are hymns that we sing because we know them, and then there are hymns that seem to make us stop and remember exactly why we sing. “How Great Thou Art” is certainly one of the latter. Originally written as a Swedish poem by Carl Boberg in 1885, the hymn eventually found its way into English through missionary Stuart K. Hine and became one of the most beloved expressions of awe and worship in Christian music. Its simple progression—from looking at the majesty of creation to contemplating Christ’s sacrifice and ultimately anticipating His return—gives the song a remarkable ability to feel both deeply personal and wonderfully enormous at the same time. Generations of Christians have sung it in churches, crusades, concerts, and around living-room pianos, and somehow those words still have the power to make a familiar song feel new.

Few artists have put their own unmistakable stamp on the hymn quite like Carrie Underwood. Faith has been a visible part of Carrie’s public life throughout her career, from the breakthrough of “Jesus Take the Wheel” to the many occasions on which she has spoken openly about the importance of her Christian faith. Rather than treating gospel music as something separate from her identity as an artist, Carrie has repeatedly described the hymns she grew up singing as foundational to who she is. When she created My Savior, that connection was at the heart of the project. Released in March 2021, the album brought together 13 traditional gospel hymns—including “How Great Thou Art,” “Amazing Grace,” “Because He Lives,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” and “Victory in Jesus”—in arrangements that blended country, folk, bluegrass, and gospel. Carrie co-produced and arranged the project with Grammy-winning producer David Garcia, assembling an extraordinary collection of Nashville musicians to help bring those songs to life.

And this was no ordinary studio project. The musicians involved read like a who’s-who of Nashville session talent: Southern gospel and harmonica legend Buddy Greene, ten-time CMA Musician of the Year Mac McAnally, gospel piano virtuoso Gordon Mote, guitarist Derek Wells, guitarist Tom Bukovac, drummer Fred Eltringham, acoustic guitarist and mandolin player Bryan Sutton, keyboardist Charlie Judge, bassist Jimmie Lee Sloas, and several other elite Nashville players contributed to the album. The result is an instrumental foundation that never tries to overpower the hymns. Instead, the arrangements give Carrie room to sing—and when that voice arrives, there is absolutely no mistaking who is in control of the room.

The performance we’re featuring this week came together in an especially memorable way. My Savior: Live From the Ryman was filmed at Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium, appropriately known as the “Mother Church of Country Music,” and was presented as a virtual Easter concert on April 4, 2021. With live audiences largely absent because of the pandemic, Carrie brought the music to people around the world from one of Nashville’s most historic stages. The event included appearances by CeCe Winans on “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” Bear Rinehart of NEEDTOBREATHE on “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus,” as well as Buddy Greene and Mac McAnally. Donations connected with the livestream raised more than $112,000 for Save the Children.

Then comes “How Great Thou Art.” There is something almost perfectly appropriate about Carrie standing in the Ryman and singing a hymn this old, in a building with so much musical history behind it. She doesn’t need a complicated production to make the moment work. The arrangement gradually builds, Carrie starts with restraint, and then that enormous voice opens up on the chorus. By the time she reaches the climactic passages, the song has moved far beyond being a showcase for vocal ability. It sounds like worship. And that distinction matters, because the greatest versions of “How Great Thou Art” aren’t merely impressive—they make you want to stop listening to the singer and start thinking about the One they’re singing about.

Of course, whenever someone delivers a truly great version of “How Great Thou Art,” there is one name that inevitably comes up: Elvis Presley. Elvis’s 1967 recording became one of the definitive versions of the hymn, and his performance earned him a Grammy for Best Sacred Performance. That is an incredibly high bar. But here at FishWorship, we’re willing to say something a little more personal: we think Carrie Underwood’s Ryman performance not only rivals Elvis’s legendary rendition—it surpasses it. Elvis brought tremendous power, emotion, and reverence to the hymn, but Carrie brings something uniquely her own: the voice of a modern country superstar, the musical instincts of a Nashville artist, and the unmistakable sincerity of someone singing a song that has been part of her faith since childhood. Whether someone agrees with our comparison is another matter, but after hearing Carrie reach that final chorus, we completely understand why this performance has become one of our favorite versions of “How Great Thou Art.”

And perhaps that’s the greatest compliment we can give it. More than a century after Boberg first wrote the words, more than half a century after Elvis put his unforgettable stamp on them, Carrie Underwood walked onto the stage of the Ryman Auditorium and sang them again. The hymn didn’t need to be reinvented. It simply needed to be sung—and Carrie sang it with the kind of voice that reminds us why “How Great Thou Art” has endured for generations.

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