We're wrapping up the 11th NFL season during which Carrie Underwood was the voice of NBC's "Sunday Night Football." Every week, the highly-rated broadcast begins with a version of Underwood's "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night," a twist on Joan Jett's "I Hate Myself For Loving You" with a few lyrical tweaks to suit that week's game, If, for example, the Lions are playing the Giants, Underwood drops in a few rhymes that squeeze in the names Jared Goff and Saquon Barkley.
Per a chat with SiriusXM, Underwood records an absurd number of versions in one fell swoop to account for possible matchups.
"It's one main version, top to bottom, and then kind of filling in lines," she told The Morning Mash Up. "When we go in to record, we do it all at once. I do the whole main version, but then we go through and pick up all the matchups for each week of regular-season football, and then we go into playoff football. And I then sing every possible combination of teams that could possibly maybe play each other."
After more than a decade as the voice of primetime pro football, Underwood's singing about football stars now who weren't out of high school yet when she first took the gig.
"I think my favorite is when ... it kind of dawns on me that it's like, before these guys were playing in Sunday Night Football games, they were watching Sunday Night Football," Underwood said. "It would've been the equivalent of me watching awards shows or people performing on TV, just being like, 'Oh my gosh, if I could only do that.' ... And I've been [recording the theme for] 11 years, so some of these guys were younger, watching these football games, just thinking, 'Oh my gosh, if I could be on Sunday Night Football.' And then, when they get there, I'm a little part of their journey, which is really cool."
As for leveling up to the Super Bowl halftime show, even someone with the star power of Underwood finds that stage daunting.
"I mean, that's a lot of pressure," she explained. "It would have to be just the right circumstances."
