Carrie Underwood sued over 'Sunday Night Football' theme

Four songwriters are claiming copyright infringement over “Game On”

Carrie Underwood, her producer Mark Bright, the NFL and NBC are being sued for the country superstar’s Sunday Night Football theme song “Game On.” The Blast, which has obtained court documents, reports that Heidi Merrill and three other writers claim to creating a song called “Game On” in late 2006 that is “substantially — even strikingly — similar, if not identical” to Underwood’s version, but were not given any credit or money.

The lawsuit claims Merrill uploaded the song to YouTube in March 2017 and was featured during a broadcast of CBS Inside College Basketball. Merrill claims to traveling to Nashville in August 2017 to attend a conference because she knew Bright would be in attendance, and that Underwood was looking for a theme song for the NFL broadcast.

Merrill spoke to Bright at the conference about using her song. The songwriter was told to forward the track to his assistant, which she claims she did via email, but didn’t hear back for two months when she was told, “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to pass.”

Over a year later, Underwood debuted “Game On” on September 6, 2018 which Merrill claims is similar “not only in title but in many other ways, including in tempo, meter, time signature, rhythmic contours and patterns, melodic contours and patterns, hooks … note progression and use, and chord progression.”

Merrill and her songwriters are suing Underwood, Bright, NBC, the NFL and others for unspecified damages.

Merrill also cites a similar lawsuit where Underwood and Bright were accused of the same thing for “Something in the Water” in 2017, but the case was dismissed.

This would be the third lawsuit Underwood has been involved in professionally. In 2013, she and Brad Paisley were named defendants for their 2011 hit, “Remind Me.” Amy Bowen, who lived in Nashville and performed under the name of Lizza Connor, claims she wrote the tune in 2007 and that Paisley and Underwood’s version is a ripoff of her song. Underwood and Paisley won the suit in court two years later.