Beyonce, Christina, and The Star Spangled Banner

WHAT’S with the US national anthem? Singer Beyonce Knowles has been hauled up for lip-syncing a pre-recorded version at the second inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, rather than singing it extempore. In 2006, another diva Christina Aguilera tried heroically only to jumble up the lyrics during the Superbowl inaugural, creating similar controversy in the American media.

Well, I researched. And here are the facts. What can one expect from a song written by a lawyer? The notoriously difficult song – both in its wordings and music – was lawyer Francis Scott Key’s tribute to a solitary American flag flying despite a night’s bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British during the Battle for Baltimore in 1812.

Essentially a war song, only one of the four stanzas is sung – much like our national anthem Vande Mataram – and yet such is the difficulty that much to its chagrin, the US government found in 2005 (thru a poll) that as many as 61 per cent Americans could not recall even that stanza correctly. Road shows were launched in response to this to educate Americans about their anthem.

The folklore on the difficulty of the American anthem has found its way into literature and satire as well. It has been humored that the British lost the battle of fort McHenry not because of the American weaponry but because they got scared of the song composed by the young lawyer! And interestingly, though the British were the enemies in that battle, the music for the anthem is borrowed from a London club song! Also, a short story by American writer Isaac Asimov on World War-II by the name ‘No Refuge Could Save’ has a German spy nabbed for he sings the third stanza of the anthem to prove his Americans, something no real American can do!