When NFL fans tune in for NBC’s Sunday Night Football on Sunday, it won’t be Faith Hill’s voice they will hear singing the anthem. Instead, country star and American Idol winner Carrie Underwood will be singing the theme song each week. In an interview, Underwood spoke about doing it and replacing another country icon.

Hill said in April that she would not be back for the 2013 season and Underwood was hired a month later. At the time, NBC executives said that Underwood was their top choice for the gig after five years of Hill performing for SNF.

“Carrie Underwood was our first and only choice to perform the Sunday Night Football opening. She’s one of America’s most popular entertainers and the perfect fit for our show,” producer Fred Gaudelli said in May.

Underwood will sing “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” a theme to the tune of Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself For Loving You.”

“We were definitely mindful — she had put her mark on it for so many years,” Underwood told The Associated Press this week. “We definitely wanted to go in and make sure we switched gears a little bit and made it sound more like me. And changed up the look and the feel just so it wasn't, you know, the same song with a different blondie up there singing it.”

Underwood said she recorded the song with her producer, so she did add elements familiar to her sound. “But we weren't like, ‘Hey, let's use some fiddle,’ or, ‘Hey, let's use some steel guitar,’” she explained. “We just wanted to make it me and make it fit the situation.”

The Blown Away singer is also starring in NBC’s live broadcast of The Sound of Music and she had to admit that she’s nervous about learning those lines.

“I have definitely been doing my part before we all get together. I figure if I at least have the lines memorized by the time I get there we can slowly concentrate on delivering them,” she told the AP. “I definitely think I am going to be surrounded by some really amazing people, so I know they'll be able to help me with that.”

Underwood’s SNF anthem will be heard before Sunday’s game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys.

image: CBS