Carrie Underwood looks unrecognizable with braces and hair braid in ’90s throwback photo

Carrie Underwood looked so different from her polished superstar appearance in a throwback photo shared to Instagram on Monday. The 43-year-old was adorable in the snap, which saw her younger self with braces and bangs as she smiled for the camera.

The teenage Carrie sported a braid across the front of her blonde hair and wore a sleeveless denim shirt with a collar to complete the look. “Me in the ’90s to remind you to watch a ’90s time warp tonight on @americanidol! #CUonIDOL,” she wrote in the caption.

The American Idol judge’s fans took to the comment section to exclaim over the unexpected throwback, with one writing: “Carrie you were too cute!” while another added: “Future superstar,” and a third said: “Look how cute!” 

Carrie was born in Oklahoma to Carole and Stephen Underwood and grew up on a farm with her parents and older sisters, Shanna and Stephanie. The blonde beauty worked hard in school and was in the Honor Society, the cheerleading team, the basketball team and the softball team.

The Idol alum always tries to get back to Oklahoma when she can, as she told Extra. “It always feels good to come home. This will always be home,” she said. “I’d like to come back more, but holidays and stuff like that…I’m around several times throughout the year…it’s home.”

“It’s a small town,” she continued. “It’s always nice to drive through town and be like, ‘Well, that’s new’ or ‘Where did that go?’ Things change and evolve, but it still feels like home.” 

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Carrie sang all throughout her childhood, yet decided to pursue higher education after graduating school and put her dreams on the backburner. She attended Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and earned a communications degree, majoring in journalism.

See another sweet throwback from Carrie below…

She then decided to audition for the fourth season of American Idol in 2005, and received full support from her parents to do so. “We never even considered that she could win it at all, but at least maybe she could have some face and name recognition, and she would get to be an anchor or something on one of our local TV shows in Tulsa,” her mother, Carole, told Today.

“It didn’t really dawn on me at that particular moment what was possibly going to happen,” she added. “Up to this time, it was just a competition. She won, and then my next thought [was], ‘Well, where do we go from here?'”

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Carrie is working to give her two sons a normal childhood, just like she had. The “Before He Cheats” singer lives on a farm outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Mike Fisher, and their boys, Isaiah, 11, and Jacob, seven. 

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“I went from living on a farm to being on stage in front of a ton of people and traveling and we’re in a different city every day,” Carrie explained on SiriusXM’s Front Row. “I learned very quickly that this is not real life.”

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“Singing is definitely one of my happy places, but the world that that takes you to is just not real. More than anything, for my family, I want them to know that,” she continued.

“It’s important for me that home is just way different than this. We have definitely established that. My kids see me. We get up, we take them to school, we’re making breakfast, packing lunches.”