Prior to the big game, the singer hit the field and belted out the song dubbed by the NAACP as the "Black national anthem."
Andra Day is feeling emotional following her Super Bowl LVIII performance at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada.
On Sunday, the 39-year-old Oscar-nominated actress and singer delivered a gorgeous rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" before kickoff. Of the performance, Day told ET's Kevin Frazier that it was "a bit overwhelming at first" but she did "a lot of praying up to this point."
"I just realized, I'm like, 'OK, not only am I supposed to be here, everyone who was here was supposed to be here," she explained. "We were meant to share this moment together at this time, you know, in this way and so the first thing I did, though, I couldn't look at individual faces, I had to see everybody as a blur."
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" has been dubbed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as the "Black national anthem." To get through the performance, Day said she couldn't lock eyes with anybody in the crowd.
"It was amazing... I think people chose joy today and that's a really beautiful thing," she added.
In addition to her Super Bowl performance, Day recently dropped her latest single, "Probably," off her upcoming third album, Cassandra, which arrives later this spring.
"I could not have planned this or line this up better myself," Day marveled. "I'm so excited and just to be able to sing this song at the Super Bowl is so impactful, 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,' and represent our ancestors and our history but also to represent the future of everyone because that's what it really represents to me."
Of her new project, Day added, "This has been a labor of love for the last seven years, you know, so to finally share it with the world truly feels like giving birth, and I'm excited."
Back in January, ET spoke to Day about how she felt about receiving the offer to perform at the Super Bowl, to which she responded, "I was so nervous but very, very excited. Grateful. And also, just an honor. It's an honor to be singing the Black national anthem."
"I think I got the call in November when they let me know that like, yes, we're greenlit to do it and I remember having a very peculiar feeling," the "Rise Up" singer recalled. "I was like, 'Why do I feel like it was, like, visceral?' I was like, 'Why am I nervous?' Terrified. I had butterflies in my stomach in November for something that's gonna happen in February."
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was originally written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson as a prayer hymn. In 1919, the song was adopted by the NAACP as the "Black national anthem."
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