After winning “American Idol” in 2005, Carrie Underwood rose through the country music hierarchy with hits such as “Before He Cheats” and “Jesus Take the Wheel.” But despite her eight Grammys, Underwood says she is perhaps most recognized for a song that is not even streamable on Apple Music or Spotify.
For the past 12 seasons, Underwood has been the musical opener for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” the prime-time N.F.L. game that is the most watched weekly program on television. Last season it averaged 21.6 million viewers, more than the 2025 broadcasts for the Academy Awards and the Grammys.
“Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” the song Underwood has transformed into an unofficial football anthem, is an adaptation of “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” the rock song released in 1988 by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.
And it comes with a four-second twist.
Each week’s rendition includes one customized lyric that highlights the upcoming matchup. Last season, those lyrical flourishes included declarations about the Los Angeles Rams vs. the Detroit Lions …
… the Chicago Bears vs. the Houston Texans …
… and the Buffalo Bills vs. the Baltimore Ravens.
The preparation for this season’s songs unfolded on a rainy June afternoon in Nashville, when Underwood walked into a wood-paneled studio, entered a glass booth, adjusted a black headset and then gave a thumbs up to the group outside. For the next hour, publicists, music engineers and sports television producers watched her enunciate the marquee games of the N.F.L. schedule.
She recorded at least 80 permutations of the brief lyric while standing barefoot.
“The song is powerful, it’s got attitude — I feel it helps my energy stay up,” said Underwood, who taped the video for the television broadcast this spring in Las Vegas. “If I were sitting I’d feel like I’d be more mellow.”
Rob Hyland, an NBC producer who has overseen “Sunday Night Football” since 2022, wrote the team-specific lyrics for each of NBC’s 18 Sunday night games. The five-page document included dozens of lines for backup matchups in case the league adjusts its prime-time slate to avoid featuring unexpectedly bad teams.
Many of the customized lyrics have similar verbiage — “about to throw down,” “nasty showdown” — because they must rhyme with the previous line that ends with “the show’s back in town.” For Sunday night’s rematch between the Ravens and the Bills, Hyland said it was important to highlight the running prowess of quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen.
As Underwood stood in the studio, a bottle of water and pencil resting nearby, she began with the lines Hyland had written in capital letters:
“Ravens and Bills in a monster showdown.”
“Alt 1: Allen and Jackson sluggin’ pound for pound.”
“Alt 2: Allen and Jackson running ’round and ’round.”
Underwood gamely sings each version before her, giving NBC options when it edits the song into the version that makes the television broadcast. The written stanzas are only suggestions, though. She has the freedom to alter them based on how they sound off the tongue.
Those changes are often minimal but effective, Underwood said. During this recording session, she abbreviated the Jacksonville Jaguars to “Jags” and added “the” before “Dolphins” for euphony.
“It’s just all about flow and the rest of the sentence,” Underwood said. “You get in there and sometimes you’ll sing something and it sounded clunky, and then somebody will be like, ‘Why don’t you switch the names or switch the order?’”
Hyland said the goal was to differentiate the lyrics whenever possible, such as noting divisional rivalries. When the Los Angeles Rams opened their $5 billion stadium against the Dallas Cowboys in 2020, Underwood sang, “Boys and the Rams are breaking new ground.” When Tom Brady faced Bill Belichick, his former coach, for the first time in 2021, the line used was “Brady and Bill, a colossal showdown.”
“There’s not a whole lot of time to really rewrite the narrative,” Hyland said, “but when we get a good story line, we will probably write something very specific.”
Underwood joked that some quarterback names can be tricky, such as the Atlanta Falcons signal-caller Michael Penix (pen-ICKS). It took multiple takes to finalize an alternate line for Week 10, when Underwood briefly struggled articulating the stanza that referred to the quarterbacks of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers: “Rodgers and Herbert sluggin’ pound for pound.”
“Dang it,” Underwood said playfully in the booth. “This is my downfall.”
Things can also quickly change in the studio. For December’s matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins, Fred Gaudelli, Hyland’s predecessor, asked Underwood to slightly adjust the line “Joe and Tua in a QB showdown,” to “Joe and Tua in their latest showdown.” Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa are often compared because they entered the league the same year.
“These guys have history,” Gaudelli said.
NBC will not learn which game it is airing for the regular-season finale until December because to maximize ratings, the N.F.L. waits to see which teams have the most playoff positioning at stake. But all the games that week are between divisional rivals, allowing Underwood to rattle off 11 versions of the same line in rapid succession.
“Packers and the Vikings, a division showdown.”
“Commanders and the Eagles, a division showdown.”
“Ravens and the Steelers, a division showdown.”
Gaudelli produced “Sunday Night Football” during its first 16 seasons on NBC before stepping down in 2022, but he remains on the network’s N.F.L. production staff. He previously worked at ABC, which featured “Are You Ready for Some Football?” by Hank Williams Jr., ahead of its “Monday Night Football” games in the 1990s.
On his hunt to develop a similar music touchstone at NBC, Gaudelli sifted through 1,800 songs on his iPod while wearing wired headphones. He landed on “I Hate Myself for Loving You” because of its tone.
“It had the great guitar groove, so the second you hear it, you start vibing to the music,” he said.
Gaudelli said Underwood was his first choice to sing partly because fans would instantly know her from “American Idol,” which at that time was the highest-rated show on television.
Underwood quickly declined, though, saying she needed to further establish herself in the entertainment industry. So NBC pivoted to Pink, who performed the song for one year before parting ways amid creative differences. Faith Hill sang it from the 2007 to 2012 seasons before she amicably left, saying she felt the show needed a new face, Gaudelli said.
When Gaudelli inquired about Underwood again, she was more open to the idea.
“I don’t think there was any convincing at that point,” Underwood said. “The timing was right and it just made sense.”
After several years of “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” Underwood and NBC tried some different openings. In 2016 and 2017, she sang a rendition of “Somethin’ Bad,” her duet with Miranda Lambert; for the 2018 season, Underwood wrote an original song, “Game On.” But they decided to return to NBC’s initial concept the next year.
“It’s just something nice and comforting about having something that people know really well kick off the show,” Underwood said.
Gaudelli said that Hill took a more leisurely approach while recording the specialized lyrics, needing about 45 minutes to warm up her voice and expressing openness to recording more lines during the season. But Underwood, who was an “American Idol” judge this year, comes into the studio preferring to complete the task in one sitting.
“These days are long, and they get tedious and all these things, but you get all of her for all the time she’s there,” said Gaudelli, who added that they would work together as long as Underwood is interested.
The feeling is mutual.
“We’ll know when it’s time to pass the torch,” Underwood said, “but we’re all still having fun.”
Emmanuel Morgan reports on sports, pop culture and entertainment.
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