Carrie Underwood is being sued by another artist who claims the American Idol season 4 winner stole her hit “Game On” and used it as the NBC Sunday Night Football opener without her permission.
TMZ reports that Heidi Merrill, a singer who had success with the sports-themed song “Cornhusker Strong” back in 2015, claims that she wrote her own version of “Game On” in 2016 and posted it to Youtube in 2017.
In her suit, the plaintiff says that they met Carrie’s producer Mark Bright at an event in Nashville in 2017. She asked him if Carrie was looking to replace her current SNF theme song for 2018.
Merrill says she submitted the song to Bright, but Carrie’s camp eventually passed on using her version of “Game On.”
According to the suit, In September 2018, Merrill was shocked when Carrie and NBC began promoting a new theme song for Sunday Night Football with the same name as hers.
The plaintiff claims that Carrie’s version is “substantially–even strikingly similar–if not identical” to her own song.
She’s Merrill suing Carrie, Mark Bright, NBC, the NFL and more for copyright infringement. But she has yet to list the amount of damages she’s looking for.
Carrie has been sued once before, along with country singer Brad Paisley, for their duet “Remind Me” back in 2013. It took 3 years, but Carrie and her team finally defeated the lawsuit in 2016.
Listen to both songs here:
Carrie Underwood’s Sunday Night Football Theme “Game On”
Heidi Merrill’s Game On
