Carrie Underwood performs "Cowboy Casanova" at "The 43rd Annual CMA Awards," on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, live from the Sommet Center in Nashville on the ABC Television Network. Photographer: John Russell / CMA

Thanks to the meteoric rise that comes with winning “American Idol,” Carrie Underwood wasn’t entirely prepared for the volume of interest in her personal life that’s accompanied her fame. She’s been particularly reserved about her love life — so much so that she ducked toward the floor when an arena scoreboard showed her at an Ottawa Senators hockey game in which her current beau, Mike Fisher, was playing.

Carrie’s still careful about how many details she wants to give away about her life, but she is becoming a little more forward. She actually paid a nod to Mike in the liner notes of her Play On CD, an album that represents her taking a more personal stance with her music.

“I get to sing from the heart, and I don’t feel like I’ve ever really done that before,” she told Fox News. “It’s therapeutic — not in a way like ‘me and my best friend had a fight and I write about it.’ Its therapeutic in a way that I’m a private person [but] even in the songs that I picked that I didn’t write, I feel like I do more then just scratch the surface. And it is more than just blonde hair and a pretty dress. It’s kind of [from the heart]. So it makes me feel really good.”

The album isn’t the only place where Carrie hopes to show the right amount of her personality. She hosts her first network TV show, “Carrie Underwood: An All-Star Holiday Special,” on Monday, and the two-hour program will highlight different facets of her past.

“We just took a lot of things from my life and incorporated them,” she said. “My mom gets to have fun on the show. She actually is showing everybody where I get ‘it’ from … if you will. It was just a lot of fun. We definitely wanted to show a different side of me, and I definitely make fun of myself.”

Dolly Parton, Kristin Chenoweth, David Cook, Ryan Seacrest, Christina Applegate and Carrie’s CMA Awards co-host — Brad Paisley — all join her on the special, which airs on FOX at 8 p.m. ET Monday.

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