The National Anthem

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

Do singers in other nations "interpret" their national anthem I wonder?

Anyways, since the tune was originally from "To Anacreon in Heaven," which was an English drinking song written by John Stafford Smith, it should definitely be sung with attention to the way the song was composed, i.e. pissed and waving a flagon of beer!

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Do singers in other nations "interpret" their national anthem I wonder?

Yup, they do. There was a discussion in Germany about a year ago when they hired some pop star to sing the national anthem at some event. She didn't even know the words and turned "flourish in the light of this luck" into "broil in the the light of this luck;" a week later something similar happened at another public event. All that led to a huge discussion whether it would be better to stop having singers interpreting the national anthem at all, but the problem is most Germans, including our soccer team, don't know the words and it looks somewhat bad at international sporting events if noone knows what to sing and out comes some mumbling garble. And Germany's anthem is really easy...

[rclouse 0]

When "The Star Spangled Banner" is sung well, it gets me every time. For example, when the Angels were playing the hated Giants in the World Series, they had the tenor from the NYPD sing it. That was 2002, just a year after 9/11, and man that one got to me big time.

I think it should be complemented by other songs like "America The Beautiful". If the singer is good enough for "TSSB", let him/her sing it. Or let the singer choose, it's all good.