Most of you know that I’m a musician. Went to school for it and everything. Because of that, I’ve spent a lot of time through the years teaching many young men and women to play music. To read the notes, to produce the biggest, loveliest, fullest sound possible. To support the notes, to breathe correctly, to pay attention to phrasing, note values, tempos, rhythms, key changes. To adhere to the heart of the music even while improvising over the melody.
Which is why something like this makes me want to rip every hair out of my head, glue it back in, and rip it out again:
That was Christina Aguilera, “performing” at the Superbowl this year. What a pathetic, ghastly performance.
Let us ignore the appalling technique for just a minute, shall we (even though I was waiting for her to hyperventilate), and concentrate on the fact that… SHE SANG THE WORDS WRONG!!!
That’s right, y’all. She got up in front of a sold-out Superbowl crowd of what, 100K? Plus how many millions of viewers at home, and belted out the following:
“What so proudly we watched, at the twilight’s last gleaming.”
Excuse me??? It’s either, “what so proudly we hailed, at the twilight’s last gleaming?” or “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?”
I give the audience a lot of credit for either being too drunk or too classy to boo her out of the stadium.
Why do we put up with this crap? Do they not audition people before they have them sing at major events like this? It would be one thing if Aguilera got up at halftime and pathetically huffed and contorted through her own songs… she wants them performed like that, more power to her. But this is the National Anthem. Why must people butcher it?
Roseanne Barr, I’m looking at you.
And can I just say this? The word is “perilous”. PEAR-ih-lus. Not PEAR-ow-lis. Why is that so hard? Nearly every celebrity I hear singing this song pronounces it the second way. Do people not care?
Yeah, they do, because I’ve seen some fabulous performances.
Carrie Underwood. Huey Lewis and the News. Jim Cornelison. Chills. Each time.
But back to Christina.
Let’s put aside the words for a minute. Her technique stunk. She huffed and puffed, took breaths in all the wrong places. Messed up rhythms and tempo. This woman is supposed to be a professional!! I won’t even get into all of those glissandos – all the oowoohoo’ing that she did.
As far as I’m concerned, the organizers of the SuperBowl should have been on the phone to the bank, stopping the check before the last broken note fell from her over-painted lips. She does not deserve one red cent for that deplorable and embarrassing performance.
My apologies, as a musician, to Americans everywhere. My kind can, and should, do better.
Us Girls..Our Views 
Any chance you’d be interested in performing @ the open mike @ our next music festival? I’m serious I’m always looking for musicians,etc. it is in mid Sept. If you would maybe Joy and family would consider taking a road trip South to watch? 🙂 what do you think? ( back to your original theme..I did not watch Christina butcher it live and I’m glad I didn’t by the sound of it)
Wow. That’s something I’ll have to think about. I’m a real musician who has gotten a bit rusty (read: not practiced) for a LONG time, other than playing fun little ditties for church. But I will definitely consider it. thank you!
Do it, Laura! That’s be awesome!
I am very lucky in that I was not able to listen to the performance. However, it seems pretty unanimous that she did a terrible job. And did not bother to learn the words. Which pisses me off, considering my kids learned the song at 3 (maybe not perfectly, but come on).
You know, people in the “entertainment world” so often have a bad attitude toward our country. I can’t help but feel that butchering / disrespecting the National Anthem is part of that trend. It’s obvious she did not take it seriously. Why not just piss on our soldiers’ graves and get it over with?
But most people want to give her the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know, I don’t follow her so I should not jump to conclusions. But it sure does seem to be a trend.
Well, I don’t even know where to begin! I was so busy seeing how not attractive she was and listening to her breath ridiculously, that I honestly didn’t notice she messed the words up until I read it online and then went, oh yeah, she did! From the beginning, I thought it was baaaaad. I think the ‘superstars’ get caught up in being ‘superstars’ that they have to outdo themselves and everyone else who has ever sang the song so they end up going way overboard. She was trying to show off and it backfired. Ha! Ha I say b/c that’s not the way the National Anthem should be sang/played. It’s just one of those songs that you don’t ‘make yours’, ya know? It would have been a knock out performance had she stood still and stuck to the script.
And another thing fellas… your hand goes over your heart NOT your errrr, ummm “package.”
Okay. I’m not a fan. I own nothing of hers and couldn’t tell you anything that’s hers. I’m not sure why. I think she’s just not my style. She’s too sexualized I think. I still sometimes think of her and think of Brittany Spears and the Mickey Mouse Club. I can’t get past it.
Okay (again). I had no idea who was singing it. I’d hope it was Faith Hill because I read somewhere that she was singing something but that could have happened during the day and I missed it. I was doing the dishes as fast as I could so I could go sit and watch so I heard she was singing it and was hugely disappointed but whatever. I’m a grown up and it wasn’t going to alter anything so I got right over it. *WOOHOO*
She looked so pale and her hair looked so weird. It didn’t look like she was anywhere prepared to sing in this venue. She’s usually so “together” and costumized that I couldn’t believe she didn’t take better care of her appearance. Then she opened her mouth and started to sing and I was singing (kind of) along with her as I always do with this song but when she sang the wrong words I just thought to myself that I got lost somewhere and it was me and not her. I thought she did a terrible job and that’s BEFORE I realized she sang the wrong words.
Who does this? Who takes a job like this and can’t sing the right words? I read that some of her “followers” are saying “give her a break, she was nervous” and various things like that but give me a break! This is what she does for a living. At that point of the song wouldn’t her nerves been okay once she was already on her way? It’s not like she did that right away. She was already way into the song.
I don’t know. I thought it was just terrible and then I saw those soldiers in Afghanistan and felt horrible for them. I bet they knew the words to the song. It just made me feel her UnAmerican somehow. Maybe an overreaction but it’s still how I felt. It was even on our 10 o’clock news last night and they said there was still “no word from her camp as to how she could “flub” those lines.”
Everybody was all over her like fly on poo within seconds of her performance!
I’ve been following the discussion about this on another site (and, of course, sticking in my twenty cents), and I keep seeing, “Oh, cut her a break, it was a big performance, isn’t she allowed to be nervous? Could YOU do better?”
This is how I respond:
1. It was no bigger a performance than any of her sold-out stadium performances, the Grammy’s, or any other time she’s done the National Anthem for a sporting event. If you want to be technical, it doesn’t matter the size of the audience, every performance is important, because people are spending their time and money to see you. They deserve your best and nothing less.
2. She’s a professional. Professionals don’t get to make mistakes. That’s why we pay them.
3. If I made the money doing what she does, and I was hired to perform at this event, you can BET I’d have done better. It’s called practice and respect. She had neither.
I just have to add that the pic of her frozen on the video makes me giggle b/c her face says it all! Scary face to go with her scary performance!
It looks like she’s being mauled! LOL
Well, lets see…cut her some slack? She is a 5 TIME Grammy winner and she can’t sing our National Anthem?! If it was a nobody, maybe, but she should have sang it perfectly. It’s such a simple song, beautiful in it’s own right, but simple. For a song that means so much to us, and for her to over do it like that, in my opinion was disgusting.
Every time I hear someone say, “cut her some slack, she was nervous”, I think back to that little girl, Elizabeth Hughes, at the hockey game. Remember her? We put the video up a couple weeks ago… Eight years old, and the mike cuts out in the middle of her performance, and SHE DIDN’T CRACK!!! SHE remembered the words. SHE didn’t mess up the melody. SHE was the professional, and she didn’t get a penny for her performance.
So, yeah…. no slack for Ms. Aguilera.
I found you through a google image search. I didn’t watch the game but was listening to the opening. I heard the song…caught the ooops. I said to my husband…”Ah….wrong, wrong, wrong…she got it wrong.” He didn’t think so. So nice to be right once in awhile 🙂 Who forgets the words to the National Anthem? It’s like DNA!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving us your opinion. We value it.
“Who forgets the words to the National Anthem? It’s like DNA!”
THANK you!!! When you’ve been singing something from babyhood like most of us have, how can you not remember it?
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I only just got a chance to watch this. Laura, you are absolutely correct, this is the most appallingly pathic “performance” I have ever seen. Right up there with Roseanne’s fiasco! 😦