O, say can you sing?

Since I have never been a fan of most sports, I was not glued to my TV for the Super Bowl on Sunday, thereby missing the butchering of the National Anthem by Christina Aguilera. However since it was repeated on every news show for the next two days I caught up with it multiple times.

Apparently the 'I'll sing it my way' approach to singing the National Anthem at a public event began at least as far back as when Roseanne Barr sang it while scratching her crotch. One would think that was as low as one could go to ruin what is basically an unsingable song to begin with.


But Christina managed not only to re-write the melody to suit herself, she re-wrote the lyrics. What talent. Francis Scott Key's grave must have been heaving.

Aretha Franklin came a close second to this performance when she sang it at Obama's inauguration, but her hat distracted everyone so much that no one really noticed the singing.

I probably shouldn't even be trying to analyse this kind of singing. It merely shows my age and predjudice, but, what the hell, sue me! To me this falls in the vocal range of caterwauling.


I remember an age when we simply tried to sing the tune as written. Admittedly it has a wide range and the end goes pretty high for many voices. In World War II when I was in high school, I played the organ (a four manual Skinner in the Kellogg Auditorium) at every assembly. After I had played the kids into the room with numbers like 'Tico-Tico' and 'I'll be seeing you', we all sang the National Anthem, as written. Admittedly, in those days we put the key down to A flat so the high note was an E flat, not a high F, but we sang it lustily.

This rage for reinventing the melody and words to suit one's 'style' is really pretty dumb.

Alexander Wolcott once said that the National Anthem should NEVER be sung, only recited by a boy whose voice is changing. 

Maybe that's the answer, Christina.