Carrie Underwood reveals what caused the accident that left her with 40 face stitches

Last Sunday, Carrie Underwood sang her new single, "Cry Pretty" at the Academy of Country Music Awards. After the emotional performance, the crowd gave her a standing ovation, and she thanked them through tears: "Thank you for having me. I’m still kind of like…shaking right now."

This was Carrie's first performance after spending months out of the spotlight. Last November, she suffered a nasty fall on the steps outside her home, leaving her with serious injuries to her wrist and face. Her wrist was broken, and required surgery, as well as a metal plate and screws. On Twitter, Carrie joked she'll "be setting off airport metal detectors from now on."

However, the injury to her face appeared to be more serious, requiring 40 stitches. In January, Carrie warned fans that she's "not quite looking the same." On social media, she avoided sharing photos of her face. Some fans feared the songstress had grotesque scarring, like The Hound from Game of Thrones! But as you can see from her CMA performance, Carrie looks absolutely stunning.

In an interview on iHeart Radio's Bobbie Bones Show, Carrie opened up about the accident at her Nashville home. We knew that she fell on the steps, but now she's filled in more details. Regarding the injury to her wrist:

"I was taking the dogs out ... and I just tripped. There was one step, and I didn't let go of the leashes—priorities!—so that's why my left hand's fine, but I went to catch myself and I just missed a step. If I had fallen anywhere else I would be perfectly fine, but it was one step that messed everything up."

Bobbie noted that Carrie's face doesn't look much different. Carrie explained that she was "very fortunate in the healing process:"

"I was lucky that when it happened, everything was kind of shutting down in the music world and we had the holidays and stuff like that. But I was at a point where I didn't know how things were going to end up, I didn't know what was going to go on, I didn't know what it was going to heal like."

Carrie was worried she'd have a glaring scar on her face, and every time she went out in public, fans would take photos of it. Thankfully, that didn't happen. But the wrist injury posed unexpected hurdles. "It set me back," said Carrie. "The most frustrating part was trying to work out with a broken wrist and how much it can throw off your world, having an appendage that’s there, but you can’t use [it]."

Now the singer has totally recovered, and returned to making music. She says "it feels good to be back" and that the tears during her "Cry Pretty" performance were real.

"There's been a lot that's going on in life over the past year, and it's always nerve-wracking introducing new music ... in that way, because the song came out just a couple days before, so I was super nervous, it's like I've never been on a stage before."