By Jeff Hunter ’96 | Photos by Levi Sim

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It’s 30 seconds of pure adrenaline, initially released on the Fourth of July with the intention of building national pride and creating anticipation for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

The promo video for NBC’s upcoming coverage features a mixture of breathtaking images of snow-covered mountains, iconic Italian architecture and incredible athletic feats, while also highlighting standout U.S. athletes Mikaela Shiffrin, Chole Kim, Jordan Stolz, Alysa Liu, Ilia Malinin, and Lindsey Vonn.

And it’s all powered by a driving beat, a relentless musical pulse entitled I’m Bringing the Heat that is utilized to help generate enthusiasm for what’s to come this February despite it being unleashed in the middle of the summer.

The music for I’m Bringing the Heat is the creation of Aleksandrs Hromcovs, a British composer, producer and studio engineer. But the song’s topline — the vocals, lyrics, melody, and harmonies — come courtesy of Emily Sara Sanderson, a Utah State University graduate from South Jordan known professionally as EJ Sarà.

MUSIC IN MOTION

It’s well over 5,000 miles from Milan to the Salt Lake Valley. And while writing the lyrics for I’m Bringing the Heat in her home in South Jordan, Sarà certainly didn’t have northern Italy in mind. Nor did she necessarily anticipate the composition serving as the musical backdrop for downhill skiing, ice hockey, and bobsled runs.

But then Sarà is never quite certain where her musical creations may end up.

Over the past seven years, the music therapy major has carved out an impressive career in sync licensing — the legal process of granting permission to use a piece of music in connection with visual media, such as films, television shows, commercials, video games, and online content. Sarà shares her creations with a variety of different music labels and services, who then make her compositions available to music supervisors in need of songs to enhance their projects.

So, that music you hear playing during an intense police chase on your favorite TV show or blaring as a college basketball game goes to commercial may have just been created by an Aggie. And in the case of the 2026 Olympics promo video for NBC, Sarà and Hromcovs collaborated on a handful of songs for a pop album released on the Hypersonic Label and published through Universal Music, then a music supervisor came across I’m Bringing the Heat and decided the song was right for the commercial.

“Our goal was to create some upbeat, fun tracks,” Sarà says. “[Hromcovs] sent me fully built instrumentals, and I created the toplines. And on this song, I was inspired by Alex’s powerful track, but also by teaching group exercise and encouraging people in my classes to go for it and ‘bring the heat.’

Sarà, who also had a song used by NBC during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, has compiled a long list of popular TV shows where here music has turned up either in an episode or in promos, including High Potential, NCIS, The Kardashians, Elsbeth, Lego Masters, The Equalizer, Live with Kelly and Mark and The Tony Awards. Sarà’s energetic music is also an easy fit for sporting events, which has led to her songs being used by ESPN, CBS Sports, the NFL Network, WWE, and featured during prestigious showdowns like the World Series and the U.S. Open.

Her husband, Mark Sanderson, just happened to be watching NBC’s coverage of the Paris Olympics when he realized that one of his wife’s songs — Greatest of All Time — was being used during a celebration of the United States’ gold-medal winning gymnastics team.

“That doesn’t happen very often because we actually don’t watch a lot of TV at our house,” says Sarà, who had no idea NBC was going to be using Greatest of All Time. “But he had the Olympics on, because they’re amazing and inspiring, and Mark said he recognized that song as soon as he heard it. That’s only happened a couple of times.”

The second time came during a college football game when Steve Sara, a USU alum and recently retired rocket scientist, just happened to recognize his daughter’s voice during halftime.

“That was pretty cool,” Sarà says. “It’s only happened twice where someone from my family has said, ‘I heard you,’ even though I literally have music on TV every single day somewhere in the world.”

While she’ll occasionally get advance notice that a piece of her music will be picked up, generally Sarà doesn’t know until after the fact, often until she receives her royalties, which happens on a quarterly basis. However, Sarà now utilizes a detection system that allows her to plug in her songs. If one of them is used on television anywhere in the world, she’ll be notified right away.

“It’s not always accurate, but they’re pretty good at finding stuff,” she says. “It was my detection system that saw the NBC promo, so that was really special to see that. The Olympics has just always inspired me, and I feel most people are very inspired by the Olympics, as well. So, it’s been pretty special to have music in the last Olympics, and then this promo for the next one. I’m hopeful that there’ll be more to come in February.”

FINDING ANOTHER VOICE

The “EJ” portion of Sarà’s artist name is short for Emily Jane, even though she doesn’t actually have a middle name.

While attending Utah State University, she shared an apartment with two other Emilys, and lived near a few more. So, in an effort to alleviate confusion, Sarà ended up known as Emily Jane, and eventually, just EJ.

And like her name, Sarà’s career path changed over time.

A graduate of Bingham High School who already played the piano, she initially became interested in pursuing a degree in music therapy when a therapist visited the school, and she was able to work with special needs students.

“I realized then that I definitely wanted to do music therapy, so I auditioned for the program at Utah State and got in,” Sarà says. “And I just love the program. I had great professors and a really good experience there.

“… I learned to the play the guitar at USU, which was essential to be able to accompany myself on piano and guitar when in the music therapy program. And I’d always written songs while I was growing up. And in high school, I listened to pop songs and figured them out on the piano, so I was very comfortable with that by the time I got to Utah State.”

Sarà also learned how to play and sing a lot of jazz standards while in college, something that ended up being very beneficial as she entered the workforce after graduation. She was working as music therapist for a hospice company in American Fork when she met Mark, who was pursuing a career in advertising at the time. That led to the couple moving to places like New York City and San Francisco, and while living in the Bay Area, Sarà worked at a facility inhabited by numerous nuns and priests battling dementia.

“Many of the of the nuns had worked as teachers, and they kind of still felt like they were teachers and were doing the same thing they’ve always done,” Sarà says. “So, we had them write songs — original songs for children to sing — and they wanted children to sing their songs.

“And so, I wrote original songs with them, and kind of guided that process as the music therapist. Then we invited some kindergarteners in the area to learn the songs and come and sing them for the residents at the facility. It was a really big event that was a lot of fun and even got some media coverage.”

Although Sarà had been writing songs off and on since she was a child, that experience really helped kindle her passion for creating new music. Around the same time, the Sandersons decided to move back to Utah, where Mark is currently a language arts teacher at West Hills Middle School in West Jordan, and Sarà ended up in a “swagger rock” band named Rubigo Pearl.

“I was writing music for the band, but I was writing so much music that the band couldn’t keep up, and I wanted to write in different genres,” Sarà explains. “I just felt like I wanted to write all of the time, and I needed another outlet. So, I sought out an online course about writing songs for TV ads and film, and I was able to learn a lot more about how that works and was also offered some networking opportunities.

“A lot of those people that were in the course with me, I’m still friends with, and some of us still collaborate with each other. So, that was great. It was the springboard into kind of a different career.”

The majority of the time, Sarà’s commercial songs start out with an instrumental track created by a producer, who will email her music. She’ll listen to it, and then come up with the lyrics, melody, and vocals before emailing her ideas back. If the producer likes what they hear, Sarà will go ahead and record the vocals in her home studio, and the producer then creates a final mix, “and gets it sounding awesome.”

“It’s just amazing,” Sarà says, “I have regular collaborators in France and the U.K., as well as one in Alberta, Canada. And I also work with people in South America, Nashville and Chicago. … I have just a huge pool of very talented people all over the world to work with.”

While creating music across different time zones can be a bit of a challenge, Sarà says its actually kind of a benefit being able to send something off and having to wait until the next day for a response. She also teaches group exercise classes and, as the mother of two young children, has two other people’s schedules to work around.

“I usually work on music when they’re taking a nap or sleeping at night,” she notes.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE HER

The first sentence of EJ Sarà’s bio proclaims she, “writes soulful, powerful, sassy and cinematic music with one theme that continues to arise: EMPOWERMENT.”

With titles like Unstoppable, Bring on the Victory, Spark in You, Hope, We Got That, and Don’t Underestimate Me, it’s easy to see that she finds music to be inspiring and very motivating — even though, ironically, she says she rarely plays her own music while leading fitness classes.

In addition to showing up on TV shows and sports productions, Sarà’s songs have been featured in advertising for Kohl’s, Nissan, Volvo, Baskin Robbins, and also used in promos for video games like PGA Tour 2K25, Valorant, and Delta Force. Sarà, who released a full album entitled Go for Broke in February 2024, estimates she writes at least a hundred songs a year, with about half of them being released.

But despite the intense workload, Sarà insists she plans to keep “bringing the heat” for years to come.

“I know that sometimes people say they can get burned out, but I don’t feel burned out,” she proclaims. “I’ve been doing it about seven years now, and I just love it. And I want to just keep doing it because it’s just really fun.”