anthems

so there i was watching wrestlemania 23. cliff describes this as being the fa cup for wrestling fans. personally i think he undersells it – for me wrestlemania is what hyperbole was invented for.

have no fear boys and girls i am not going to talk about wrestling here, i could never do it the justice that cliff could do.

what impressed me was the fact that aretha franklin, the queen of soul, opened the event by singing america the beautiful.

it strikes me that anthems serve a few purposes: they are there to inspire, they are there to show loyalty and they are there to bring people together. this is never more apparent than at sporting events.
national anthems can be “official” such as “god save the queen”, slightly less official, such as “rule britannia” and plain unofficial but popular such as “swing low sweet chariot”. when the crowd gets together to sing the song it buoys up the sportsmen and allows the crowd to be the, famous, extra man.
i am not ashamed to admit i get a little shiver of pride when i hear either “god save the queen” or “rule britannia” ring out.

oddly it could be argued that for all the accusations levelled at the english we are all that patriotic (and there is an argument that would say that is one of our major problems) yet my experience of americans there is nothing they like more than to chant “usa! usa! usa!” that said they love to make the singing of their national anthems at sporting events a pretty impossible thing to do.
both “star spangled banner” and “america the beautiful” are used to start events, and as it is the usa the bigger the event the bigger the star who will sing the chosen song. apparently “star spangled banner” is hard to sing (i wouldn’t know as every song is hard for me to sing in something approximating in tune) and rarely goes beyond the first verse (we know all about that in england…) which is one of the reasons “america the beautiful” was written and is sung.
the problem with getting stars to sing the anthem is that they can’t resist putting their interpretation on the song.
so at wrestlemania with aretha crashed through “america the brave”, she stretched notes to breaking point, she added words, she warbled. even the choir behind her seemed unsure as to when they should join in. absolutely no chance for the fans in the audience to join in the vocal gymnastics that ms franklin was going through.
over the years i have seen and heard americans butcher their anthems as the singer tries to find new ways to make it their own. there have been jazz whispering versions of, diva beltings of it, pop posturings with it, soulful slanderings of it.
the audience left bemused (in fact in the borat movie you ended up thinking that if only borat had sung it in the style of a mariah carey no one would have commented on his new words for it…) the artist left with a feeling they have done a fine job.
me i am left with the feeling: only in america.