The Star Mangled Banner

I know I'm a curmudgeonly old fogey but I really don't care for people making our National Anthem "their own" as contestants on American Idol might do to show their musical versatility. I can't stand what my mother refers to as "searching for the note" that so many women singers do today where they run up and down the scale as if trying to get the right note in there somewhere. So when Christina Aguilera started right off the bat searching and searching and searching for notes, I was already turned off...but when I heard the "what so proudly we WATCHED," I was no longer proudly watching.

Yes, it's a challenging song to sing well. Yes, people sing it less and less these days. Yes, singing front and center at a televised Super Bowl adds a level of tension that would defeat lesser performers. But Christina Aguilera is a highly-paid, and highly-skilled professional. Maybe, just maybe if she had been searching less for the notes, she might have not misplaced the lyrics.