Tag: National Anthems

This Week in National Anthem Disasters

Anthem fails: they’re not just for Americans anymore.

Deadspin gives an account of this very, very unfortunate version by Measha Brueggergosman of my country’s big song:

While the average length of “O Canada” as sung before an athletic contest is a bit shy of 50 seconds, Brueggergosman stretched it to almost two minutes and drew titters from players on both benches as she warbled her way through a nearly unrecognizable rendition. 

The most cringe-worthy moment comes when, clearly dying out there, the Canada’s Got Talent judge enthusiastically calls for the crowd to sing along. Polite Canadians, they do.

I wonder how the Kazakhs would handle a butchering of their national anthem? Maybe we’ll find out:

It was pretty classy of the medalist, Maria Dmitrienko, to keep her composure in what could only have been a humiliating and confusing situation.

Zooey Deschanel’s National Anthem, Or How (Not) to Talk About a Performance

Two responses to Grantland‘s broadside against Zooey Deschanel’s national anthem bring up a problem that confounds everyone concerned with analyzing music: the difference between a transitory live performance, where an audience measures success in that moment, using a set of expectations conditioned by context; and t a recording of the same event, a mediated experience that listeners experience individually, over and over again.

Jason Heid, on Dallas’s D Magazine tells us what it was like to experience Deschanel’s rendition at the game:

I was at Rangers Ballpark for Game 4 last night, and loved the sense of melancholy with which Deschanel infused the familiar song. It felt almost like a funeral dirge, and I mean that as a high compliment. It was quite different from what we normally get at these games: when some mid-level country music or top 40 star is trotted out for a serviceable, but instantly forgettable, performance. 

A reader of Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish makes the point that the Deschanel version, as opposed to the much praised Whitney Houston’s at the 1991 Super Bowl, was perfect to sing along with:

Zooey sang it like she meant it. Even the way she softened the ends of most of the lines gave the audience room to hear themselves singing along, and isn’t that supposed to be the point?
Her job was not to deliver an aria to a silent hall; it was to lead the crowd in singing the song. 

However dramatic or pleasing Whitney Houston’s rendition might have been, you can’t sing along to it. you can only listen … Singing the national anthem is supposed to be a participatory ritual, not a spectator sport. 

Is it fair, as Grantland did, to evaluate a live performance based on a video recording of it? Are Caspian-Kang and Vargas-Cooper (these are their names, really), and Jason Heid responding to the same thing at all? And do we really want to sing along?


It Wasn’t as Bad as All That, Was It? Zooey Deschanel’s National Anthem

Relax, guys. On Grantland, Jay Caspian-Kang and Natasha Vargas-Cooper rant over this:

Here’s a sample:

Where have our divas gone? There is no strife in ZoZo’s lily-white aesthetic. No sex, no violence, just tweeting. What a tepid and sniveling symbol she is. She has nothing to draw on, nothing to find resonance in. She’s not even fit for our time. Give us a beleaguered icon. Someone trying to maintain their imperial draw even though they’ve grown bloated and waterlogged with age. I want to hear the sounds of a woman who has known loss and triumph, not the pubescent squeaks of a flinching sitcom star with cute bangs and a stupid blog. 

Very classy.

There have been far worse renditions of our national anthem, and many better. If you can stand reading their childish drivel, Caspian-Kang and Vargas-Cooper have their own best-of list.

O Say Did You Know?

David Hildebrand pointed out on the Society for American Music listserv that “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the official US national anthem 80 years ago today. The BBC interviewed him for World Update (at about 47:40). I haven’t seen much about it in the American news yet; I’m sure the Canadians will have something to say about it.

You probably know that the “The Star-Spangled Banner” got its melody from a drinking song. But do you know which one? And did you know that Francis Scott Key’s lyrics first appeared in September 1814 as a broadside in Baltimore?

The Smithsonian Museum of American History has a great section on its website where you can find out a bunch of stuff about our national anthem. Check it out and impress your friends.

And whatever you do, make sure you know the lyrics.