Carrie Underwood filmed another new opening for NBC‘s Sunday Night Football coverage, and the first look was released on Wednesday.
SNF producer Fred Guadelli shared a photo of Underwood in a locker room corridor, with six cheerleaders by her side and indoor fireworks. “Shooting the 2018 Sunday Night Football open with Carrie Underwood,” Guadelli wrote.
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The 2018 SNF season will be Underwood’s sixth as the opening singer. Pink and Faith Hill preceded her, singing “I’ve Been Waitin’ All Day For Sunday Night,” a version of Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself For Loving You.” Underwood sang the song herself before it was replaced with “Oh, Sunday Night.”
Last year’s opening saw Underwood joined by 10 NFL players, including Antonio Brown, Derek Carr, Don’t’a Hightower, Travis Kelce, Julio Jones, Khalil Mack, Von Miller, Patrick Peterson, Dak Prescott and Jason Pierre-Paul.
Fans will get to see the 2018 opening for the first time on Thursday, Sept. 6, when the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles play their NFC East rivals, the Atlanta Falcons, to kick off the season. The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers play the first Sunday night game of the season on Sept. 9.
The NFL opening is just one part of Underwood’s busy fall. On Sept. 14, just days after the NFL season kicks off, Underwood’s new album, Cry Pretty, hits stores. The album includes the title track, which Underwood performed at the 2018 ACM and CMT Music Awards. She will be releasing a video for the song, including live footage from Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium.
“The title refers to when emotions take over and you just can’t hold them back,” Underwood said in a statement when the single was released. “It really speaks to a lot of things that have happened in the past year and I hope when you hear it, you can relate those feelings to those times in your life. It’s emotional. It’s real. And it ROCKS!”
Underwood is making a comeback after she retreated from public view last fall. She fell at her Nashville home, requiring 40 stitches to her face and suffered a broken wrist. Her latest single, “Cry Pretty,” written with Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna and Liz Rose, reflects Underwood’s struggles to get back to form.
“Everything you do has an impact on the music, and everything you go through and live through has an impact on writing,” Underwood recently said on The Bobby Bones Show. “I feel like it maybe, I don’t want to say it ended up being a good thing, but when you write you have more to write about. You’re coming from a different place.”
During the CMT Awards earlier this month, Underwood and husband Mike Fisher appeared together on the red carpet for the first time since the accident.
