NBCUniversal, National Football League and Carrie Underwood sued over Sunday Night Football theme song
Aux Features Carrie Underwood
Football fans, are you ready for some litigation?! Per Yahoo! News, a group of songwriters have filed a federal lawsuit against NBCUniversal, the National Football League, Carrie Underwood, and others for allegedly plagiarizing a song originally posted on YouTube for their Sunday Night Football opening theme, “Game On.” Heidi Merrill, Alex Wong, Jeff Cohen and Niclas Lundin claim in their official complaint that Underwood and company only “slightly modified” Merrill’s song, which was originally posted in 2016, and used it without proper permissions or credit. Merrill also claims that the song was sent by email years ago to Underwood’s producer, Mark Bright, who ultimately passed on working with them.
For reference, here’s Merrill’s song from 2016:
And here is the Sunday Night Football opening theme that is currently under fire:
Aside from a title inspired by literally all things competitive, are there enough similarities here to raise alarm? We guess that’s for the judge to decide.
26 Comments
The beats are very similar, and both have the “Game On” chorus, but Underwood’s version tells us to “turn up the light” while Merrill’s instructs us to “get up, get loud, make your momma proud.” Clearly different requests.
I have a problem telling the difference between any modern country pop songs.
I can’t really tell the two singers apart.
Physically or vocally
Both.
Say what you will about Marvin Gaye v. “Blurred Lines,” but that was a bad verdict that opened the door to the idea that an artist can copyright a “style” or a “feel.” I bet this case will cite it.What if Prince’s estate sued “Uptown Funk?” A style of music left for dead 30 years ago was turned into an awesome song that millions of people enjoyed. I want more of that, not less.
There is nothing remotely “awesome” about “Uptown Funk.”
Disagree!
I get it. Some people like warmed over new jack swing completely devoid of interesting musical or lyrical content and crassly written by committee to be pumped into sports stadiums in perpetuity. It doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person.
You’re a remarkable idiot
Somewhere in the world Paul Kinsey gently swirls a snifter of brandy before dropping the needle of his record player on to an immaculately preserved vinyl from the 1930s. As the scratchy, low-fidelity audio begins to fill the room he wanders over to the window of his penthouse, tightens the belt on his robes so as to not expose himself to world, and sighs contentedly to himself. “This is real music,” he muses to no one in particular before taking a cigar from the lacquered box on the closest end-table. As he sets about lighting the cigar with a cedar wood chip, the melody travels from nearly a century past to 2019, intermingling with the floral bouquet of the tobacco. Truly, this is the way the world should be.
tl;dr you sound pretentious as hell my dude.
Upvoted for effort. Not making an anti-pop or anti-2019 music take though. I enjoy a good sugary pop confection from time to time just like anyone else and I don’t think that the music of my youth was inherently better or anything. That song is just trash.
Actually, sounds like he’s living his best life.
a) wrong, and b) have fun being miserable at every wedding, party and sporting event for the rest of your life. (Or maybe you don’t get invited to those).
a) See my comment above.b) The bastard who wrote the “Cha Cha Slide” already doomed me to that fate years ago.
That music has been around. I am not sure what you want to call Uptown Funk but there have been lots of bans making similar music over the years.
the gap band DID sue mars for ripping off Oops Upside Your Head and won
https://www.bet.com/news/music/2015/05/04/uptown-funk-splits-writing-credits-with-the-gap-band.html
They really don’t sound anything alike, other than being bad.
But both subliminally drive people into stocking up on guacamole and chips.
Funny they both made me call my local Naval recruiter.
Considering how notoriously similar pretty much all Nashville country music sounds, I kind of assumed they had some sort of legal protection against copyright infringement lawsuits.
Thankfully competitive tennis doesn’t have this problem:
I did think that Jenna was being a bit derivative there, what with her ode to balls, in general:
I’d like to see what the defense would be on the damages side of this lawsuit. I’d think the NFL could plausibly argue that they did not make a single dollar from this song because the existence or non-existence of a Carrie Underwood song has never caused a single additional person in the history of television to tune into the show. For the life of me I can’t understand why they keep recording these segments and who gets excited about them.
For the life of me I can’t understand why they keep recording these segments and who gets excited about them.Carrie Underwood’s agent
So, somebody preemptively put time and effort into writing a generic, sports-adjacent theme song with the sole objective of shopping it to different networks?This is what’s wrong with music.