Just sing

 

The Star Spangled Banner is intended to leave you with a lump in your throat.

Since we are celebrating Memorial Day it seems appropriate to discuss the Star Spangled Banner.  We all have pet peeves.  One of my biggest ones has to be when people who sing the National Anthem during a sporting event and try to make it their own.  My advice, which I often voice from my living room in the general direction of the TV, is just sing.

The song, in my opinion was meant to encourage the country, not to exalt an individual.  Not time to make it your own and bring attention to yourself and help give you career a boost.    

In 1990, Roseanne Barr showed us how not to sing the national anthem before a baseball game with an embarrassing performance laden with inappropriate humor.  Meanwhile, Whitney Houston showed her country the right way before Super Bowl XX when she brought the house down with stirring and most memorable rendition.  Since the National Anthem was written in reverence, it should be sung as such.

Here’s a little history.  For many years, I thought the Star Spangled Banner was written during the Revolutionary War.  However I was mistaken, it was actually written during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812, in which we fought the British. 

The Francis Scott Key, who was a thirty five year old attorney at the time, was in the act of successfully helping a client be freed from the British.  However, he was detained by the British because the siege on Fort McHenry was under way.  It was there aboard a neutral vessel, about eight miles away, that the song writer was given a bird’s eye view of the American Fort .

Despite Great Britain’s best attempt to seize the city of Baltimore, by firing upon it ceaselessly for twenty five hours, they could not overtake the Americans.  Swept up by the moment of seeing the flag at Fort McHenry still flying as the smoke cleared in the morning, Francis became inspired and began to write. Thus in an act of pride, Key penned the patriotic words we now know as the Star Spangled Banner.

I don’t know about you, but I get a lump in my throat whenever I hear these words:  And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ;O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Play ball.

The best way to pay tribute to a song writer is to just sing it the song as it was intended.

Swavel