The worlds of country and rock collided when Axl Rose made a surprise appearance during Carrie Underwood's set at the Stagecoach Festival earlier this year for a performance of the Guns N' Roses classics "Paradise City" and "Sweet Child o' Mine." Speaking with Rolling Stone, Underwood shares that the live collaboration was "years in the making."
"I've been covering Guns N' Roses my whole life, pretty much, and definitely onstage for the past 15 years at least," Underwood says. "I had asked before if he would ever come sing, or if I could come to him somewhere. We had a couple almost maybes, where it almost maybe would have happened but for various reasons it wasn't the right time."
Leading up to her Stagecoach set, though, Underwood decided to send Rose an email explaining "the why and what he meant to me."
"The way I learned how to sing was I would pick really hard vocalists to try to emulate, and [Rose's] voice always mesmerized me," Underwood says. "I was like, 'How is he doing the things that he's doing?' So I told him all that...and he came!"
"We had rehearsals and everything went very smoothly," she adds. "It was easy for all of us to be around each other. Hopefully, he had a good time."
We'd guess that Rose, indeed, had a good time since Underwood later joined GN'R to perform "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Paradise City" during the band's shows in London over the summer.
Underwood, meanwhile, continues to show GN'R love on her current tour, during which she's covering "Welcome to the Jungle."