Next time you’re on Long Island, look out for Joan Jett. She will be the one driving around in a brand new Cadillac ELR.
“When I bought it a few months ago, it was the only one in Nassau County,” Jett, now 55 and still touring with her band The Blackhearts, tells the Post. The queen of rock ‘n’ roll isn’t someone who splurges on $75,000 electric cars or other flashy accessories very often, but it’s one of the things that ” I Hate Myself for Loving You” – the theme from NBC’s “Sunday Night.” Football” – bought it.
Released in 1988 and co-written with songwriter Desmond Child (who also co-wrote some of Bon Jovi’s biggest singles), it initially reached the Top 10 on the Billboard charts. The track found new life in 2006 when NBC chose it as the theme song for its prime-time football show and renamed it “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night.” Over the past eight years, new versions with altered lyrics have been sung by Pink, Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood, but Jett and his co-writer Child enjoyed the spoils.
Veronica Gretton, founder of New York-based music publishing company 401K Music Inc., believes that while Jett won’t suffer financially, she probably hasn’t earned enough yet to move next door to Mark Zuckerberg. “(The year) 2006 was a bit of a rough time for Joan, so NBC probably underestimated her,” she speculates. “But even so, it’s a highly watched show, so I think it probably made a few thousand dollars a week, times a 17-week season over eight years. So that’s $272,000 as a base number, which will be split 50/50 with Desmond Child. When you add in performance royalties, international screenings of “SNF,” as well as sales of the original track driven by fans hearing it, Gretton believes it would have grossed at least half a million for Jett alone.
Oddly, the writers of “I Hate Myself for Loving You” didn’t initially want to hand their baby over to NBC, but Jett agreed. “I’m not Kanye West and I’m not on the radio all the time, so it helps my band stay paid,” she says. “I’m just glad I don’t have to sing the new versions. I’d probably end up singing the football version on stage by accident.
