O! Say Can You Sing

Steven Tyler flubbed the National Anthem, or so some say.

Two things to consider:

1. It's "The Star-Spangled Banner".
2. It's Steven Tyler.

We're not talking something simple such as "Happy Birthday". Our National Anthem is a very difficult song for most of us to sing. The phrasing is a bit weird. The first stanza is basically two questions. The melody goes from too low for me to sing all the way up to too high for me to sing.

We're not talking Doris Day. We're talking Steven Tyler. He sang the song exactly how you would expect Steven Tyler to sing it. No one should have been surprised.

And what about all the crowd noises while he was singing? That was very disrespectful. Maybe we need to get back to a Marching Band playing the song while we all sing along. Gotcha! You know you would flub it too, don't you?

The perfect solution is to have Stephen Colbert sing the National Anthem. He always does a wonderful job.

O! Say Can You See

Stephen talked about the protests and occupiers today. And an injury. We wish Scott Olsen well and hope for a full recovery.

Next was the NBA and two commercials from the Colbert Super PAC that were quite interesting. Apparently everyone is named Mark Cuban.

Toby Keith has a new album, Clancy's Tavern out now. Toby is a good, ... no, he's a Great friend of the show. He also is on tour, a true American heartland tour with the next stops being Edinburgh, Manchester, London, Amsterdam, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Helsinki, Basel, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Berlin. Oh, Stephen had fun with that, but really, isn't everywhere actually the heartland? If your heart is there, it sure is!

So yes of course a performance by Toby Keith and then a commercial. And you know how after the commercials there are only a few seconds of the show left where Stephen says, "Good Night," or something similar? Well not tonight. Tonight was the Best Ever Performance of The Star Spangled Banner by Stephen Colbert and Toby Keith. It is well worth going over to Colbert Nation to watch the full episode and to listen to them sing. They got all the words right and they hit all the notes.

Most people can sing the lyrics to our National Anthem, but it's usually not so easy to just say them or write them. Try it now and see how well you do. Okay, now go on over to Wikipedia and look at the lyrics to all the verses for The Star Spangled Banner and read up a bit on the history of this song.

But for sure listen to the golden voices of Stephen and Toby. Awe-inspiring. Enthusiastic support from the audience also. Well done, sirs.

Note: You may also want to read what I wrote about the Star-Spangled Banner back in February of this year.

O! Say Can You See

Stephen is on vacation this week. I wonder if he watched the Superbowl. Probably. I wonder if he noticed that Christina Aguilera got the lyrics mixed up a bit when she sang the National Anthem. Probably. And I wonder if he would mention it on The Colbert Report if he was actually working this week. Probably.

But he's on vacation, so I will defend Christina Aguilera for her flubs.

The reason it happens is, and I hope Stephen forgives me for being a teeny tiny teeny tiny bit unpatriotic here, our National Anthem is not an easy song to sing.

For the average Stephen on the street, some of the notes are too low or some are too high. The lyrics are often, and I do mean often, messed up. There have even been videos (long time ago) of guys who started singing our National Anthem and by the time they were done had gotten some of the Pledge of Allegiance and also the 23rd Psalm mixed in with the verse. So, yep it was not good that she messed up, but lots of people do.

To prove my point, take this test. Without singing the song or humming it, write down the lyrics. It might be easier if you sing, but just do the lyrics. I'm willing to bet you make at least some mistakes even if it's just a word or two spelled wrong. To check to see if you are right, look at the Wikipedia article on The Star-Spangled Banner.

The internet is an interesting place to poke around. I read the whole article on The Star-Spangled Banner including the part about Isaac Asimov's short story, "No Refuge Could Save." The main character was able to find a German Spy during World War II because the spy knew the words to the third verse of The Star-Spangled Banner. (You don't know anything besides the first verse, do you?)

So I followed that link and then found a link to Shibboleths and then followed that link to a List of Shibboleths. There's a bit of interesting information there about all kinds of shibboleths including nuclear vs. nucular. Personally, I prefer nuclear because, well, it is the correct way to say that word.

You didn't think I could get from Christina Aguilera to Nucular, did you?