Carrie Underwood’s Sunday Night Football theme “Game On” is a rip-off, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. federal court in New York City.
Heidi Merrill alleges she pitched the country superstar and producer Mark Bright a song titled “Game On” in August 2017 but got turned down. Then, Underwood debuted a song in September 2018 that Merrill claims is “substantially – even strikingly – similar, if not identical.”
The lawsuit names both Underwood and Bright as defendants and notes that they faced similar accusations in 2017 over the song “Something in the Water” by Canadian songwriters Ron McNeill and Georgia Lyons. (That case was eventually dismissed.)
Merrill alleges the pair “knowingly, willfully, and intentionally copied original, copyrightable elements” of her song and “publicly performed or displayed” it “for substantial personal and commercial gain.”
She and her co-writers are seeking unspecified damages.
Reps for Underwood have not yet commented publicly on the lawsuit.
Listen to both songs below: