Songwriter Drops Lawsuit Against Carrie Underwood Over NFL Sunday Night Football Song
By Ryan Naumann on October 9, 2019 at 7:38 AM EDT
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The songwriter who accused Carrie Underwood of ripping off her work has dropped her massive lawsuit.
According to court documents obtained by The Blast, a songwriter Heidi Merrill has informed the court she is dismissing all claims against Underwood.
Back in June, Merrill sued Underwood and the NFL accusing them of stealing her work.
She accused the singer of plagiarizing her work and creating her song “Game On”, which ran during Sunday Night Football.
Merrill claimed she and three other writers came up with a song called "Game On" in late 2016.
The suit said, In August of 2017, Merrill attended a conference in Nashville in large part because she knew that Underwood's producer, Mark Bright, would be in attendance.
She said she knew that Underwood was looking for a new song for the 2018 NFL season and told Bright she had a song she thought would be good for Underwood.
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Merrill claimed that Bright told her to submit it to his assistant, which she claims she did via email. About two months later, she says she got an email back saying, "I'm sorry, we're going to have to pass."
Fast-forward almost a year and when "Sunday Night Football" premiered on September 6, 2018, Underwood performed a song called "Game On" ... which she claimed was "substantially — even strikingly — similar, if not identical" to her own song of the same name.
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Merrill claimed Underwood's song is similar "not only in title but in many other ways, including in tempo, meter, time signature, rhythmic contours and patterns, melodic contours and patterns, hooks ... note progression and use, and chord progression."
Merrill and her songwriters sued Underwood, Bright, NBC, the NFL, and others seeking unspecified damages.
