Sunday, January 18, 2004
How to sing the Star Spangled Banner
On the brink of the AFC Championship Game, LeeAnn Rimes (no, Lee Ann does not rhyme, and I bet it isn't the first time somebody wrote that) sang the Star Spangled Banner. Like a lot of pregame hired voiceboxes, she showed up with her own arrangement of our national anthem, changing the tune at various places, trilling away at others. I wish she hadn't. I like my national anthem straight, sung the way it has always been sung, with no element of originality. Oh, I don't have any problem with people playing around with it on their own time (see Jimi Hendrix), it being a free country and all, but when I sit down to watch a football game and am essentially captive (OK, I'm only captive insofar as I don't want to haul myself out of my Lay-Z-Boy sofa to reach the remote so that I can hit the mute button), I want my national anthem straight, without so much as a twitch of artistic expression.
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