“I don’t miss any opportunity to sing with her”

Eric Church had vowed never to sing the national anthem… but then came the Super Bowl.

Chat with Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music Country’s Today’s country radiothe singer revealed the reason he agreed to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” with Jazmine Sullivan next month. (PEOPLE can exclusively publish the interview in advance.)

“I haven’t met her yet. She’s perhaps the best singer. I was speechless,” says the 43-year-old emphatically. “I’m a fan. I went and listened to everything she did. And I had heard her name, but to be completely honest, I hadn’t listened.”

Church thanks producer Adam Blackstone for bringing him and 33-year-old Sullivan together for the performance.

Getty (2) Eric Church and Jazmine Sullivan

RELATED: R&B Queen Jazmine Sullivan: Everything you need to know about the 12-time Grammy nominee

“I’ve been saying this forever: ‘I will never sing the national anthem…’ that’s so hard. Except for the Super Bowl,” he said. “I’m not Chris Stapleton. I fully expected they would never ask me to.”

“My first reaction was, ‘Mm-mm. I’m a stylist, not a singer,'” he adds. “I heard it and thought, ‘That’s cool, that sounds like me.'”

But then … he heard Sullivan’s voice and he was sold.

“And then I heard her and I never miss an opportunity to sing with her. And that was it,” he says. “When I heard her voice, I said, ‘Okay, I’m in.'”

Church also spoke about his upcoming triple album titled heart and soulhis “favorite project we’ve ever done.”

Jason Kempin/Getty Eric Church

RELATED: Jazmine Sullivan and Eric Church to sing the national anthem together at the 2021 Super Bowl

“It was spiritual for me,” he says of the new album. “We stepped back… It’s the biggest project we’ve ever done.”

“It’s always interesting when you have a group of songs that you’ve written and you say these are my top 10 or 20 and everyone listens to them and decides what they are. I feel like when you get into the studio you’ve listened to those songs and thought about them and played them,” Church adds. “I wanted to write a song the same day we recorded the song and let the creativity flow, and if it was crap, it was crap. Just let it be what it was meant to be. And there’s nothing better than the birth of a song.”

The country star says recording this album was “the greatest liberation” and “soul uplifting.”

“It’s real. It’s very real,” he says.

Tune in to Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen to hear the full conversation Friday at 9 a.m. ET.