After 13 consecutive seasons, it’s safe to say Carrie Underwood is synonymous with Sunday Night Football. Year after year, since 2013, the “Before He Cheats” singer takes the stage on our screens, singing her heart out while placing the competing teams on a pedestal before our eyes. While it may seem like she’s singing the exact same lyrics week in and week out, attentive listeners know that’s not the case. Instead, every Sunday Night Football montage showcases the actual teams playing.

In a recent sit-down on Highway Mornings with Cody Alan on SiriusXM’s The Highway (channel 56), Carrie provided listeners with a little behind-the-scenes intel from shooting the Sunday Night Football opener. In short, it’s anything but a one-and-done day of filming.

“It’s all spread out,” Carrie told Cody. “We’ll go in and we’ll record the base track first, and we always try to kind of refresh it a little bit every year.” As you may recall, Carrie’s song has changed over the years. After a couple of years singing “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” Carrie switched to “Oh, Sunday Night” and “Game On,” before returning to “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” in 2019. Since then, she and her team have tweaked the sound ever so slightly to make it feel fresh for the new season. “We’ll work on it; it’s the same bones, but we always try to do little things that are a little bit different,” she reveals.

Once the song is set, it’s time to film her performance. What starts as a day of nailing down the basic performance transforms based on how the season evolves. “Depending on what the theme of it is, they might talk to other players or film other intros of other players, and go to different cities and stuff like that,” Carrie says. “Then they cut it all together, and then I go back into the studio and I will record every combination because they’ll know what their lineup is going to be for Sunday nights.”

It doesn’t end there, though. Since the playoffs aren’t predetermined, Carrie also records every possible combination of teams to ensure they have what they need. “So first, I do all of the Sunday night schedule, and then I do any combination of anybody that could ever possibly play each other really well in the playoffs,” she shares.

So the next time you watch Sunday Night Football and think it’s just the same song and dance, consider that Carrie is reworking it time and time again for the best fan experience.