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“I think my favorite thing about this game is its power to connect who we are, to who we were,” she said in the video, which aired before the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers matchup.
By Kimberly Nordyke
Managing Editor, Digital
Celine Dion is ready for some football.
The singer kicked off the live broadcast of Sunday Night Football on NBC and Peacock, starring in a filmed opening sequence set to her 1996 hit song “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”
The segment kicked off Sunday’s game between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers, which haven’t faced off against each other in primetime since 1982. The game also marked the teams’ first matchup since they played each other in Super Bowl XXX in January 1996.
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Dion starts the segment by paying tribute to the game of football.
“I think my favorite thing about this game is its power to connect who we are, to who we were,” she said. “To prove that our most powerful memories, our most enduring loves, can stay with us forever.”
The camera then shows her wearing a sweatshirt from Super Bowl XXX with both teams logos and helmets. The Cowboys and Steelers have played in three Super Bowls — more than any other Super Bowl matchup.
“You know what I’m talking about, right?” Dion continues. “Sometimes, some nights, it all just comes back.”
The video is interspersed with footage of the Steelers and Cowboys playing each other in previous games.
“Their love affair — well, maybe not love the way I usually sing about it, but still, you know, work with me here,” Dion continues, and then starts quoting from her song: “I mean, ‘When you touch me like this. When you hold me like that.’ It kind of fits, no?”
She goes on: “But really what beautiful passion it produced, what painful heartbreak it revealed so, so long ago. Like so many old flames it always feels right when they’re back together. Don’t you think? Like tonight evoking the kind of magic they once produced. the Cowboys and the Steelers, a timeless classic on Sunday night.”
The video ends with her getting doused in Gatorade, as many a game-winning coach has been over the decades.
Watch the video below.
“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 on Oct. 26, 1996, at No. 2, behind Los Del Rio’s “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix).” Dion’s song stayed at No. 2 for five weeks.
In its announcement, NBC noted that SNF has been the No. 1 show in primetime for 13 consecutive years. It’s averaging 24 million viewers through 24 weeks this season.
Dion’s appearance in the SNF segment comes on the heels of her widely praised performance at the Opening Ceremony at the 2024 Summer Olympics. That marked her first public performance since revealing her Stiff-Person Syndrome diagnosis two years earlier. Following that revelation, she canceled all of her 2023 and 2024 concert dates.
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