Oh Say Can You See…
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Christina Aguilera is probably still in bed with the covers over her head this morning. On Sunday night, at the opening of Super Bowl XLV in Arlington Texas, she flubbed a line of The Star-Spangled Banner. I was more focused on how not to break my Tostito Scoops in the 7-layer dip, so I didn’t hear it, and neither did my husband and neighbor.

But a lot of people were paying attention, because the social networks lit up before kick-off. She was supposed to sing, “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.” Instead, Aguilera repeated a botched version of an earlier line and sang, “What so proudly we watched, at the twilight’s last reaming.”


This is why I am never, ever, ever going to sing the Star Spangled banner at a Super Bowl.


“I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of the anthem still came through,” she said after the performance.

So……………. where do you go with this? Don’t look at me. The dark side is saying, ”What, didn’t she know the words?” which is soon crowded out of my mind by the thought, ”I still can’t tell the difference between her and Gwen Stefani. The blond hair and red lipstick…” Okay, just being real, here.

Aguilera certainly isn’t the first one to screw up the national anthem. I read that Macy Gray was booed at the Pro Football Hall of Fame when she mangled the song in front of a home state crowd. ”This was definitely life’s most embarrassing moments.”

Aguilera is talented. She looked amazing. She sang the thing with heart. I gotta tell you, I feel her pain so deeply. There isn’t anybody out there who’s ever given a presentation and made a big mistake who doesn’t get that. You just want to crawl away. Magnify that eight bazillion times, and you’ll have a fleeting, flashing sense of her angst. I don’t care if she’s given ten thousand concerts to stadium crowds. I don’t care if she’s a five-time Grammy winner, or that she’s been singing it since she was 7 years old (as she claimed when she got the nod for her big moment).

Look at it this way. Most comedians would rather run naked down Rodeo Drive than get tapped to host the Oscars. It’s that scary. I’ll bet that a lot of music artists pass on the Super Bowl, too. “You know, I think I’ll just stay home, rest my vocal chords and watch it on my 72 inch screen in the man-cave.”

I do think there’s some kind of lesson here - about how executives giving big speeches should learn to use confidence monitors or teleprompters. Many of them don’t but really, they should. They shouldn’t READ speeches, but they should have some kind of support out there. That’s what technology is for.


I’m guessing that they’re never going to have confidence monitors for singers at the Super Bowl, though. It’s a macho event. I’m not just talking about the players (some of those hits - how do they pick themselves up off the ground?)

No, I’m talking about going out there all by your little lonesome and acting like you’re just singing in the shower. That’s really hard to do.