Mark Likes Music

Is it really the worst ever ?   More national anthem disasters here .

Well, it was definitely distinctive, and at least it was short : Was the "internationally acclaimed" Fray's national anthem at the NCAA men's basketball championship game last night the worst ever , or just inappropriately oddball ? At least it wasn't this: Yes, TMZ, it did suck .

Anthem fails: they're not just for Americans  anymore. Deadspin   gives an account  of this very, very unfortunate version by Measha Brueggergosman of my country's big song: While the average length of "O Canada" as sung before an athletic contest is a bit shy of 50 seconds, Brueggergosman stretched it to almost two minutes and drew titters from players on both benches as she warbled her way through a nearly unrecognizable rendition.  The most cringe-worthy moment comes when, clearly dying out there, the Canada's Got Talent judge enthusiastically calls for the crowd to sing along. Polite Canadians, they do. I wonder how the Kazakhs would handle a butchering of their national anthem ? Maybe we'll find out: It was pretty classy of the medalist, Maria Dmitrienko, to keep her composure in what could only have been a humiliating and confusing situation.

Two responses to  Grantland 's broadside against Zooey Deschanel's national anthem  bring up a problem that confounds everyone concerned with analyzing music: the difference between a transitory live performance, where an audience measures success in that moment, using a set of expectations conditioned by context; and t a recording of the same event, a mediated experience that listeners experience individually, over and over again. Jason Heid, on Dallas's D Magazine  tells us what it was like to experience Deschanel's rendition at the game : I was at Rangers Ballpark for Game 4 last night, and loved the sense of melancholy with which Deschanel infused the familiar song. It felt almost like a funeral dirge, and I mean that as a high compliment. It was quite different from what we normally get at these games: when some mid-level country music or top 40 star is trotted out for a serviceable, but instantly forgettable, performance.  A reader of Andrew Sullivan's...

Relax, guys. On  Grantland, Jay Caspian-Kang and Natasha Vargas-Cooper rant over this : Here's a sample: Where have our divas gone? There is no strife in ZoZo’s lily-white aesthetic. No sex, no violence, just tweeting. What a tepid and sniveling symbol she is. She has nothing to draw on, nothing to find resonance in. She’s not even fit for our time. Give us a beleaguered icon. Someone trying to maintain their imperial draw even though they’ve grown bloated and waterlogged with age. I want to hear the sounds of a woman who has known loss and triumph, not the pubescent squeaks of a flinching sitcom star with cute bangs and a stupid blog.   Very classy. There have been far worse renditions of our national anthem , and many better. If you can stand reading their childish drivel, Caspian-Kang and Vargas-Cooper have their own best-of list.

David Hildebrand pointed out on the Society for American Music listserv that "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the official US national anthem 80 years ago today. The BBC interviewed him  for World Update (at about 47:40) . I haven't seen much about it in the American news yet; I'm sure the Canadians will have something to say about it. You probably know that the "The Star-Spangled Banner" got its melody from a drinking song. But do you know which one? And did you know that Francis Scott Key's lyrics first appeared in September 1814 as a broadside in Baltimore? The Smithsonian Museum of American History has  a great section on its website where you can find out a bunch of stuff about our national anthem . Check it out and impress your friends. And whatever you do, make sure you know the lyrics .