O say can you stop singing? Let's get a different national anthem. This one's too hard
As we head toward the Major League Baseball playoffs and a new NFL season — which began with last week's Pro Football Hall of Fame Game — here's hoping the folks in charge of the nation's sporting events will consider this humble request:
Please stop sending innocent singers to their doom by inviting them to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Just replay Whitney Houston's flawless rendition and be done with it.
The most recent attempt, as heard during last month's Major League All-Star Game, was so horrendous it sent a country music star into rehab.
Ingrid Andress later confessed that she drank too much prior to her performance (really, who could blame her), which certainly would help to explain some of it.
But not all of it.
That's because "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the musical equivalent of a great white shark, devouring anyone who unwittingly wanders into the spotlight.
A poll published by the Kennedy Center found that two-thirds of us don't know all of the words to the song (first stanza), but we do know a bad rendition when we hear one.
Whose national anthem performance was the worst?
After Andress' unfortunate outing, she landed at No. 4 on Billboard Magazine's list of the 12 worst National Anthem performances of all time.
The list includes singers who forgot and even changed the lyrics; one who inexplicably added dancers and handclaps; and efforts so bad that they damaged careers, among them, actor-comedian Roseanne Barr and singer Kat DeLuna.
Others were luckier — they simply were booed off the field or flayed on social media.
The song, which recounts the American flag miraculously surviving the British Navy's bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, is based on Francis Scott Key's original poem, "The Defense of Fort McHenry."
Key described the sight he beheld following the attack on Sept. 13, 1814, after being dispatched to negotiate for American hostages and was himself taken by the British.
The poem later was coupled to the melody of "To Anacreon in Heaven," composed in the 1780s for a British "gentleman's music club," a powdered-wig way of saying "bar."
Interestingly, the anthem didn't become official until 1931 when President Herbert Hoover signed it into law.
Because it's a poem and not structured like a standard song, it's become a trap door for those who try to place style over substance. As a result, it has been butchered by a who's who of music, including Christina Aguilera; Michael Bolton; the late Marvin Gaye; the trio of the late Dr. John, Aretha Franklin and Aaron Neville; Olympian Carl Lewis; and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, who murdered it not once, but twice.
The exception to the rule is Houston's brilliant performance at Super Bowl XXV in 1991. Only a human Stradivarius like Houston could have pulled it off. Other outstanding versions include Chris Stapleton's at Super Bowl LVII, and those done by Beyonce, Reba McIntyre, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, the Chicks, Pentatonix and Luke Bryan.
But no one's rendition is as perfect and pristine as Houston's.
No one can dispute that the The Star-Spangled Banner's striking melody makes the heart skip a beat, but as we approach our country's 250th anniversary, perhaps it's time to consider a new song less complicated and a little more melodious, say, "America the Beautiful."
Unless and until that happens, stadiums should simply opt for Whitney.
Please. Before someone else gets hurt.
Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at 330-580-8313 or [email protected]. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Star-Spangled Banner is too hard to sing, Charita Goshay writes
