A fancy private reception took place two weeks ago to welcome Carrie Underwood back to Las Vegas. Executives from Resorts World and AEG Presents, other invite-only VIPs and a handful of media guests showed up at the Crockfords Hotel lobby to toast the country music megastar, who arrived in a red Rolls Royce.

That sort of thing doesn’t happen every time a resident headliner comes back to the Strip to perform. The continuation of Underwood’s Reflection show at Resorts World Theatre—it resumed on June 21 and returns to the stage for two more summer performances this week before breaking until September—marks a special occasion, since she hasn’t performed in Las Vegas since December. The 40-year-old Oklahoma native and Nashville resident has been busy since then, with her 43-city Denim & Rhinestones Tour supporting studio album No. 9, released last summer—a hectic jaunt running from October 2022 through March 2023.

She deserved that pink Champagne toast based solely on the past nine months, but also, Underwood is a crucial piece of Resorts World’s and Las Vegas’ overall modern entertainment history. Reflection, after all, is the show that opened the 5,000-seat theater on December 1, 2021, after Celine Dion had to postpone her scheduled dates due to health problems.

When the Strip’s newest jewel was fighting the good fight to open during pandemic circumstances, Underwood stepped up.

“Carrie is an unstoppable force in the music industry, and her residency here in Vegas is a celebration of her impressive career,” says Drew Strozza, Resorts World’s vice president of entertainment. “It’s been amazing to have her be such a huge part of opening our Resorts World Theatre. June will be an incredibly special month as we celebrate our 2-year anniversary and welcome her back for this residency run.”

Underwood’s first residency show already marked a massive achievement, and replacing Dion as the first artist to take the stage certainly heightened the experience, Underwood tells the Weekly.

“I think it changed my mindset a bit. We already had everything in place, as far as what the production would look like, the setlist, the lighting,” she says. “But for me and how I felt about things, it was like, OK, [Dion] was going to be there, and she’s done this before, and there was no doubt that she would have whipped everything into shape, so to speak. It seemed perfect for me, so there was definitely a bit of a shift, because you just want to do a good job.”

By all accounts, Reflection has exceeded expectations, selling out its initial run and all 18 of last year’s shows, while helping— alongside productions from Katy Perry and Luke Bryan—to establishing Resorts World Theatre as the Strip’s newest residency room. It’s also a showcase for Underwood’s biggest hits, including “Before He Cheats,” “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” “Blown Away” and “Cowboy Casanova,” and its scale is as big as it gets.

“It felt pretty comfortable from the start, because it’s a hard thing to get into a groove when you’re out on tour



[going from] place to place and everything is always changing,” she says. “It’s nice to be in one place, and it’s just that feeling that it’s Vegas and you want to bring a show because people expect to see a show. It was really exciting to create something like that.”

Underwood says she loves being able to make use of more elaborate staging and set pieces than what her tours can accommodate, and the show-closing water sequence that accompanies 2014 crossover smash “Something in the Water”—a track with spiritual themes that shows off Underwood’s incredible vocal range—is one of the most talked-about moments in any current Strip residency.

One of Underwood’s Vegas residency peers is also a country collaborator from her past. Keith Urban, who recorded the hit “The Fighter” with Underwood for his 2016 album Ripcord, is on his second Strip go-round. After launching a residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in 2019, Urban slid over to Bakkt Theater at Planet Hollywood for a new production this year. He knows what it takes to make these grand endeavors work, and it starts with talent.

“Her voice is extraordinary,” Urban tells the Weekly. “When we wrote ‘The Fighter,’ I could only hear her singing it with me, and she slayed it.”

With Bryan, Miranda Lambert andGarth Brooks joining Underwood and Urban, country residencies might be at their Vegas peak. And the genre “is reaching an all-time high all around the world right now,” Urban says, “and the magic of Vegas is, we’re playing to that global audience every night.”

But unlike pop or rock residents, Vegas’ country artists are often required to elevate their offerings further, to satisfy country music fans’ expectations—especially by performing during the National Finals Rodeo in December—while also appealing to the mainstream audience that makes up the typical Vegas visitor demographic.

Underwood says she definitely wanted to create a performance that went beyond her concert tours, but she didn’t get caught up in those other kinds of expectations. She hasn’t seen other Strip country residency shows, chalking that up to being “a bit of a fuddy-duddy who just goes to bed after my shows.” She’s hoping to catch some stuff this year.

“I’ve never really thought about doing things versus what other artists are doing. I always want to be me … but we want people to be visually stimulated and still love what they’re hearing,” she says. “We want them to forget about what else is going on in their universe for a while and just be submerged in the music. So you want to be you but also meet the bar that Vegas has set.”

Underwood set the bar for her own stage presence early on, famously wowing viewers and industry execs on her way to victory on Season 4 of American Idol at age 22 in 2005. And she has earned new fans and further impressed existing ones by covering her favorite rock ’n’ roll songs in concert, specifically “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses. (She famously performed with Axl Rose at Stagecoach last year and again during this year’s tour stop in LA, and she’s set to open for GNR on August 26 at Nashville’s Geodis Park.)

The genre-bouncing continues with this month’s launch of Carrie’s Country, the SiriusXM channel curated and presented by Underwood, available 24/7 to subscribers acrossNorth America on the radio and the SXM app. She’s highlighting many of her musical friends among personal favorites and longtime influences, everyone from Dolly Parton and Brad Paisley to AC/DC and the Rolling Stones.

“I grew up listening to everything equally, from stuff my parents wanted to listen to and stuff my older sisters wanted to listen to, and country permeated all of it,” Underwood says. “That’s why I gravitated toward [country] and wanted to be a part of it, but there’s been so much rock music, and I think it gets into my music here and there.”

She says working on the channel has reignited her own music fandom, forcing her to sit down, listen and decide what she wants this different representation of Carrie Underwood to sound like. “It’s been a lot of fun, and I am trying not to look at things too much or get too calculated. I just want to do a good job and have fun with whatever I’m doing.”

She appears to be having fun on the Vegas stage, too. She’ll be back at Resorts World Theatre in the fall and during rodeo week in the winter. Next year’s plans have yet to be determined.

“I’m taking it one run at a time, but I hope I’m there for a while,” Underwood says. “I just really enjoy my time there, and I’m honored to be a part of the entertainment scene, because that’s what Vegas is all about.”

CARRIE UNDERWOOD: REFLECTION June 30 & July 1, 8 p.m., $50-$768. Resorts World Theatre, axs.com.

Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!