Shouldn't Christina Aguilera know the words to the National Anthem as well as a respectful way to deliver them?

There were thousands and thousands of people in that stadium. There were millions and millions at home watching from their couches and super bowl parties.

Every single pair of eyes was on that one person.
Do you really think you wouldn’t get extremely nervous at that level of attention?

People flub lines all the time because of anxiety. It happens.

@sinscriven she should be used to performing in front of large audiences and should make a point to be familiar with the material, just my opinion, of course.

I don’t think it’s a lack of familiarity with the material, every american kid gets that song drilled into their head whether they liked it or not. Tthough she may be used to performing for stadium sized crowds, it’s still an entirely different beast to be performing in front of the entire country.

People are acting like this song is easy, but it’s a bit difficult, it’s got a wide range, and bounces around that range fairly frequently, it’s extremely easy to fall flat or sharp. And it will naturally be nervewracking for a singer because this is a very highly sentimental song for many people.

She’s human. That’s how/why she screwed up. I’m not a big fan of her, but It’s kind of obnoxious hearing the bitching about it.

I totally agree…How could such a important respectable organization as is the NFL make such a tremendous mistake….Humanity will never recover lol

She’s an idiot.

@sinscriven To be honest, I agree with @coffeenut that its not a big deal. But I disagree with your point. She is a professional singer who has performed a lot. If she couldn’t handle the pressure, she should not take the gig. Also, its not about messing up a flat or a sharp, its about messing up the lyrics.

Technically speaking, she is one of the most talented singers out there. Very few artists have the vocal range she does.

She knew the lyrics. She’s sang the anthem before at NBA games with no problem. It was a mistake. Recording artists have messed up their own lyrics before. It could happen to anyone.

I don’t agree that Aguilera was being disrespectful—that’s just her style, just as every singer who’s done it has given it his or her own style. This is not to say I liked it; I thought it was awful. And considering this woman is an experienced professional entertainer, I think it’s unforgivable that she messed up the lyrics.

I’m not all that familiar with the lyrics, and even I noticed something was ‘off’ with her version.

Christina Aguilera was the only part of the event I wanted to watch…love her.

My mom said that sometimes people don’t practice this song as much because they think they just know it because of how common it is and how often it’s sung, but it turns out that they actually don’t know it as well as they thought and thus we have situations like this. I’d also bet that the immense pressure on anyone singing the anthem at the Super Bowl (one of the most watched events in the world) could someone to get nervous (understatement) and mess up. Sure, she has done concerts, but there’s a certain extra pressure on the Super Bowl anthem-singer.

I bet the majority of the people so riled-up over the flub don’t even know the words themselves.

And WTF is a respectful manner?

It was lame. Better luck next time…Maybe.

She sang “What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last reaming,” instead of “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.”

The first four lines are:

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?

It seems more like she was singing, lost her place, and tried to recover at the end of the line (“gleaming” to “streaming” coming off as “reaming”). It was more transposition than not knowing.

It was a screw up, plain and simple. What’s amazing is that I didn’t really know that there were three to four more verses of the song, – and don’t even start to ask me to sing them…I have no idea what the lyrics are.

I so agree with @psychocandy. I’d be hard pressed to recite, let alone sing, those lyrics; it’s just not something we’re called upon to do very often. Now if I were getting paid even a fraction of what they paid Aguilera, I’d damn well make sure I knew the words!

To be fair, the US national anthem sucks big time, so it’s a pretty tough gig for anybody. The words read like a William McGonagall poem.

Not that I can talk. God Save the Queen is far and away the worst anthem ever

But in retrospect she did do a hell of a better job than I would have…

I think this article illustrates exactly what I was talking about.