Dear National Anthem singers

In order to help you with your future gig, we suggest that you pay heed to the following:
1) Remember the right words to the song.
2) It ain't about how much you can warble. Sing the damn song in key and without the extra crap.
3) It ain't about you, period. Sing the song without drawing it out. The longer you take, the more people think you're foolish....

 

Seconded.

 

It's not like I had high expectations once I saw the "performer."

 

Oh, god.

OK, Christina has one of the strongest, most powerful voices of anyone who has come out in the past 20 years. period. So all this "Oh, she's pop, she's shit" is a joke. And it's been played out.

 

She held the word brave for longer than six seconds. Easiest prop bet in gambling history.

 

Agreed! But she still did an atrocious job with the anthem. I think back to Whitney Houston and Super Bowl XXV, where she went with the song the way it was supposed to be done and just let her voice take over. That's what Aguilera should have done today, oh, and make sure she knew the words to the song.

 

This is so true. Adding in the extra stuff, trying to jazz it up, put your own spin on it, etc., is probably what actually makes people forget words, or their place, anyway. Oftentimes, it also ruins the song, and/or puts it off-key, and ultimately, turns off listeners or causes them to cringe -- or to anticipate cringing.

That is not what we're supposed to be doing.

If your voice is good enough to do the song well -- and, granted, this is no small feat -- then just use your special, God-given talent and sing it right.

Your voice, and the song itself, will be good and powerful enough on their own. They also will be appreciated most, and best, when the performance is just done the way it's supposed to be done.

 

Well, exactly. It doesn't matter how powerful your voice is if you're not going to sing on key and if you're planning to needlessly embellish every other word.

 

We all know I hate agreeing with IJAG but Christina is the ONLY pop singer since--what, Mariah?--to actually have vocal talent AND commercial success.

I love Lady Gaga and think she's very gifted musically but her vocals are so-so. Christina is a DAMN good singer and that's what makes today's botch that much worse. My wife & I were thoroughly looking forward to seeing what she would do and it's a shame she screwed up.

But to say she's not talented is retarded. All it takes is one look at the halftime show to see what passes for talent these days and if you can't see the massive difference in vocal ability between that shitshow that is the Black Eyed Peas and Christina, you're clearly either deaf or unable to listen to music objectively.

 

Christina's last CD -- the one that had "Candy Man" on it -- proved she could pull off the 1940s schtick Bette Midler used to do in the 1970s. She's got range AND talent, but this didn't help.

It also probably guaranteed future artists will be lip-synching just like on American Bandstand.

 

Having performed the song several times before semi-major sporting events, I cannot fathom how people screw up the words unless they're a nervous kid or just blank on the entire song, which sucks but does happen. The words are really not that hard. Learn them right.

The warbling is oftentimes to disguise a lack of range or the inability to sustain a note without going flat/sharp. That song is damn hard to sing and stay in tune. It's got a fairly big range at an octave and a half with sustained highest and lowest notes, and people have a bad tendency to not think through the whole song when they pick a starting note. And honestly, I don't mind a little embellishment as long as it fits within the already written phrasing and rhythm. A trill here or there won't kill me.

The few times I did the anthem at larger stadiums, I was told I had a time limit (usually in the range of 90-120 seconds). Of course, this doesn't apply to your superstar performers, who are there as much to promote themselves as to sing the song.

My pet peeves -

Sing the damn thing in 3/4. The song is in 3/4. It is not in 4/4, no matter how much you like the Whitney Houston version. That was an arrangement that changed the time signature.

If you're a skilled singer, read the phrases and know where to breathe. For instance, you should not phrase it "oh say does that star-spangled" *BREATHE* "banner yet wave." Bad singer. Learn breath control.

And for the less experienced singers, all I ask is they stay around the same key they started in. Just a whole step or so. Being nervous makes you get tight and go sharp, and I get that. But try and keep the pitch climbing under control.

 

It's been seven or eight years since Christina Aguilera had true commercial success. Why was she singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in the first place?