Carrie Underwood’s Rock Impulses Take Over the Sunday Night Football Opening

Carrie Underwood has spent 14 seasons waiting all day for Sunday night, but this year’s rendition of the Sunday Night Football theme does something different: it foregrounds the rock instincts that have long run beneath her country mainstream image.

The track, built on Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ 1988 single “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” was treated as straightforward rock rather than country crossover. That choice reflects a well-documented side of Underwood’s career. She has covered Motörhead and Skid Row live, opened for Guns N’ Roses, shared stages with Axl Rose, and this month performed nu-metal staples by Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Papa Roach at Velocity Fest in Iowa.

The opening video amplifies that angle. Filmed in a small club, a stadium, and a recording studio, the sequence positions Underwood as a performer moving through the spaces where rock identity gets built. SNF creative director Tripp Dixon said the concept drew directly from “Carrie’s deep, well-documented love of rock music.” Underwood herself described the open as welcoming the broadcast into her “ongoing rock star fever dream.”

The first game paired the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants, with Underwood’s weekly lyric change naming both rivals. The segment works less as a country star lending pop gloss to football and more as a performer using a massive platform to sharpen an identity she has been cultivating for years.