If Carrie Underwood could change anything about her victorious run on “American Idol” in 2005, she knows exactly what she’d do differently: take more pictures and save more stuff.
“I’m very angry with myself because when I was on the show, I wasn’t taking any pictures,” she told Billboard while filming part of season 24 in Hawaii. Now a judge for the second season in a row, Underwood admitted, “I’m thinking, ‘Why? Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you save these things?'”
Carrie Underwood Wishes She Documented Season 4 Better
GettyUnderwood, who won “American Idol” in its fourth season, and the season 24 cast — host Ryan Seacrest and fellow judges Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie — sat down with Billboard while filming the Ohana and Top 20 rounds at Disney’s Aulani Resort & Spa. During the group interview, published on March 10, 2026, they were all asked what they would change about their experience on the show if they could go back in time.
Expanding upon her big regret about not keeping more memorabilia from her winning season, Underwood said, “We had a girl come in that had a pair of jeans that I wore on the show, and she told me, ‘My grandpa bought these at a charity auction’ and I wore them on the show! And I asked, ‘Can I buy them back from you?’ Why did I let them go? Why didn’t I keep more things and just document things a little better?”
Seacrest quipped, “I have the judge’s desk from your season if you want. It’s in my basement.”
Although Underwood may not have kept many wardrobe items or taken enough behind-the-scenes pics, she did keep a journal during her “Idol” journey and she kept the blue Mustang she received as part of her winnings. During her first season as a judge in 2025, she took the cast for a ride in Nashville for a segment that aired on the show.
In 2020, she told Today’s Country Radio that she still had the car in a garage at her family’s estate near Nashville, and would occasionally take it out for a spin.
“It always makes me want to drive it more because it was such a pivotal point in my life,” she told the outlet. “Every time I get in it, I’m always like, ‘Why don’t I just drive this more often?’ Just because it makes me feel good.”
Ryan Seacrest Wishes He Could Change His Style From the Early Seasons of ‘American Idol’
GettyWhile Underwood wishes she’d kept more memorabilia, Seacrest told Billboard he wishes he’d had given more thought to his style in the early years of “American Idol.”
He joked, “I must have approached this show as if no human beings were watching it, when you look at what I decided to wear and how I looked for the first season. It was a new show. Who knew if anybody was going to tune in? And so sheer shirts and spiked blonde hair and oversized baggy suits and a terrified look on my face. I’d try and change that. I’d try to assume maybe somebody was watching it in the beginning.”
Richie hilariously said the thing he’d change about his “American Idol” experience is an episode during his first season of judging, in 2018, in front of a live audience when Bryan and then-judge Katy Perry put a whoopie cushion on his chair. Later in the same show, he said, his chair accidentally toppled over on live TV.
DisneyThe one thing Bryan wishes he could change was far more somber than the others’ answers. The country star said he “would have cherished more moments with Willie Spence,” the season 19 runner-up who died in a car accident in October 2022.
“That’s a biggie to me – losing him and knowing how much he touched me in that room, in that space, watching him perform week in and week out,” Bryan told Billboard. “It was truly breathtaking. He was from Douglas, Georgia, which is an hour from my hometown. That loss really affected me.”
