Despite a few fumbles and flags at this year’s Super Bowl XLV, a bigger slipup surfaced at the big game, and it had nothing to do with the players. Five-time Grammy Award winner Christina Aguilera was asked to kick off the night by singing the national anthem, but just a few minutes into her riff-laden rendition, both athletes and spectators were found raising a quizzical brow.
We did indeed see by the dawn’s early light, as well as proudly hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, but when it came to gallantly streaming…well, there was none of that. The patriotic tune’s fourth line, meant to read, “O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming,” was instead replaced with Aguilera’s own version, “What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last reaming.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Francis Scott Key included any reaming in the song’s original lyrics.
For some, Aguilera’s error was simply shrugged off, but for others, it was an outrage. It didn’t take long for the vicious Joan Rivers to chime in, asking PopEater.com, “How stupid can you get?” The same dumbfounded reaction was unanimous among those at the Super Bowl party I attended on campus and had most of us second guessing our own abilities to recite the tune word-for-word. Sure, maybe this time Aguilera can blame it on the stage fright, but the same cannot be said for the some 61 percent of Americans who truly do not know the words to our nation’s anthem.
A 2004 Harris Interactive Survey found that at least two out of three Americans cannot flawlessly recite the Star Spangled Banner and one in three don’t even know its official name. In Christina’s defense, the survey also found that only 39 percent know the words following, “Whose broad stripes and bright stars.” But those people probably weren’t five-time Grammy Award winners either.
While Aguilera did issue a statement apologizing for the mishap, stating, “I got so caught up in the moment of the song that I lost my place…[but] I can only hope that… the true spirit of [the] anthem still came through,” it still didn’t leave the performance feeling like anything less than an amateur game show. Ok, Xtina, sure, 111 million viewers can be nerve-racking, but when opening for the Grammy Awards this weekend, take heed, and dare I say, in true game show fashion, “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!”