Faith Hill Sunday Night Football

In recent years ESPN's Monday Night Football has been eclipsed by NBC’s Sunday Night Football by such a wide margin, few fans even debate the issue.

But there is still another question for football fanatics to ponder: Which night of the week has the hotter theme song?

The idea of a pop singer kicking off a football telecast started with “Are You Ready for Some Football?,” Hank Williams Jr.’s catchy remake of his country hit “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight.” The party anthem, coupled with random celebrity cameos, from Gwyneth Paltrow to Lil’ Kim to Nicolette Sheridan, have been pumping up Monday Night Football fans since 1989.

But NBC set out to change the score in 2006. The network’s execs figured that they were going to need to “get the party started” with a killer theme song for their own version of Sunday Night Football (which previously aired on ESPN). So, the Peacock branched out and chose singer Pink. Sure, adding a hot chick with a great voice into the mix wasn’t exactly the most original showbiz idea, but for primetime NFL telecasts, it was indeed a first.

Thus was born Pink’s feisty pre-game song, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” which debuted on Sept. 7, 2006 — a remake of Joan Jett’s 1988 quintessential angry woman anthem, “I Hate Myself For Loving You.”

The pink-haired rocker gave the broadcast’s graphics-heavy intro that one-two punch NBC execs were looking for, complete with air kicks, fist pumps and shots of Pink clad in more sexy dresses than you see on Oscar night. Choosing a strong, powerful woman to compete with Hank Williams Jr.’s theme song offered universal appeal. It got men excited for obvious reasons, and, perhaps not so obviously, it fired up female fans to see one of their own belting out a kick-ass football song.

The following year, Pink had to bow out reportedly because of scheduling conflicts. So, the network replaced her with Faith Hill, maybe because the Mississippi-raised singer could rival Hank Williams Jr.’s country-music cred. Still, Hill seemed to be an odd choice to continue the bad-ass intro that Pink had reinvented; I mean what was she going to do, sing a remake of “This Kiss” to get us pumped up for the game? (Um yeah, that’s the song she performed on the NFL Kick-Off game in 2007. Didn’t exactly get viewers pumped for the big game.)

But NBC must have figured out their Faith faux-pas with “This Kiss,” because they then had her belt out her own version of “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night.” In spite of some skeptical fans who had come to love Pink’s Sunday Night Football theme song, Hill’s version more than held its own.

It didn’t hurt that Hill is actually a die-hard fan of football and the Tennessee Titans. “Particularly men find it hard to believe that women can be big fans of football, but I love it,” she told the Associated Press. “Dinner has to be planned around the game at our house, homework has to be finished, it’s an all-gather-around-the-television time.” (link)

This year, Hill is returning to continue the Sunday Night pre-game musical tradition. She has also been featured in a new Sunday Night Football commercial where she invites some players over to “cook” for the big game.

So which night has the better theme song? My vote goes for the hot women of Sunday Night Football. Sure, Hank Williams Jr. has rocked his pre-game theme for so long, the once-edgy tune now is practically as old-school-NFL as Vince Lombardi. But, for me, there’s nothing better than a powerful woman belting out, “I’ve been waiting all day for Sunday night,” and actually meaning it as much as I do.

A True "American Idol" graces The Idol stage

“Dawg! When you hit that high note -- 'That’s the the way that love’s sup-POSE-ed to be' -- THAT was the Faith we’ve come to know and love throughout this competition. That was hot -- you ARE the next American Idol!!”

Oh, that’s right -- Faith Hill got the jump on "American Idol" long ago. Yet it was tough Friday not to keep watching from the wings during the opening of her two-night stand at the Hollywood Bowl expecting Randy Jackson or Paula Abdul to pop out and give her a standing ovation.

She’s everything “AI” contestants strive to be: outwardly humble, vocally unrestrained, temperamentally not too hot, not too cold. Hill’s the diva for people who don’t like divas, so even-keeled there’s never a hint of the kind of distracting quirk that can come with a Whitney, Celine, Madonna or even a Kelly.

On Friday, that meant despite the added forces of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra behind her six-piece band and three backup singers, there was a striking shortage of musical electricity during the 65 minutes she was onstage.

Not a shortage of volume or sonic density given close to 100 musicians were there with her. But Hill’s music studiously avoids any sort of dynamic tension or thematic ambiguity that might give listeners a second thought. Or at times even a first one.

She noted that it was her first show of the year, outside of the performance she gave in January for the inauguration of President Obama. If her country-star hubby, Tim McGraw, ever makes a White House run, she’ll be the kind of first lady who never causes so much as a ripple of controversy: polite, gracious and not a rebellious bone in her tall,slender fashion model body.

It’s also the formula for a singer who’s interested in hits, not one who’s particularly motivated to plumb the mysteries of the human heart, mind and soul. She introduced “Paris,” from her 2005 album “Fireflies,” as one of the most beautiful songs she’s ever sung, and true enough, this wistful ballad has a gorgeous melody whose appeal to a vocalist is a no-brainer.

But it’s one of those romantic cheats that too easily promise things the singer isn’t empowered to give:

I’d give this world to you
Every rock and every stone
Every masterpiece in Rome
But tonight I can’t give you Paris.

Even ignoring the fuzzy logic in Gordie Sampson, Troy Verges and Blair Daly’s lyric, there was none of the full-throttle passion that Texan Joe Ely pumped into “For Your Love,” a far superior examination of the lengths to which love can drive someone. That’s the kind of committed delivery it takes to makes you want to believe such over-the-top vows even when you know they’re beyond the reach of mortal beings.

It’s the same problem Hill ran into with “Mississippi Girl,” a song from the same album, which came after her pop-minded “Cry” album had country fans grousing that she’d turned her back on her roots. Eager to prove them wrong, she sang, “A Mississippi girl don’t change her ways,” sounding anything but credible as she belted it in her designer floral gown under a hair and makeup job that cost more than most of her fans’ cars.

She’s sold nearly 20 million albums in the U.S. in the last decade and a half, and not without reason: She has a versatile pop-soul voice that can go admirably gospel when she wants, as in her medley that saluted Aretha Franklin by stitching together “Dr. Feelgood” and her arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

But long before those nefarious two other Simons (Fuller and Cowell) started inflicting their vision of what music should be on the world, Hill opted to devote herself to pull-no-punches verses and overblown choruses, giving discerning listeners only fleeting glimpses -- as on her impressively tender 1999 recording of Bruce Springsteen’s “If I Should Fall Behind” -- into what artistic heart might reside behind those giant killer vocal cords.

Hill's conductor and orchestral arranger, David Campbell, occupied the first half with a refreshingly diverse program of music by Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Elliot Goldenthal and Ottorino Respighi and one selection from a musical he and his wife, Raven Kane Campbell, are working up.

-- Randy Lewis

Tim McGraw and Keith Urban Bank More Than Their Wives

In true "Alpha male" fashion Tim McGraw and Keith Urban are the major breadwinners in their respective households, according to a recent issue of PEOPLE magazine. The article examined the 2008 incomes of several celebrity power couples and found that two of the reigning male country music stars are earning bigger paychecks than their famous wives.

McGraw’s $70 million paycheck, from sales of his platinum album ‘Let It Go’ and from the Soul 2 Soul Tour, beat wife Faith Hill’s $19 million that she made from the same tour and from her album sales. Urban made $35 million, also from album sales and touring, narrowly beating out the $22 million his movie-star wife, Nicole Kidman, earned from movies and endorsements.

When asked to comment in a recent interview Hill joked “This is a good thing because I dont think Tim’s “manly man” ego could handle it any other way”