The Superbowl is on tv and I’m sitting here listening to poor Billy Joel struggling to sing The Star Spangled Banner. He’s trying manfully, bless him, but he’s losing the struggle. Let’s face it, Americans, our national anthem is un-sing-able. It’s time to change it. What do you think the new one should be?
God Bless America is out of the running. It’s not in the public domain yet. Irving Berlin’s heirs hold the copyright, with the royalties going to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America. Anyway, the agnostics and atheists would protest.
Then there’s America the Beautful. Nice tune, but the lyrics are lacking. There was a recent thread here (which I can’t find) that points out that the repetition of the word “for” is silly and the meaning unclear. “For beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves” For, for for, for … What’s up with that?
Then there’s Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land but I think it, too, is still under copyright.
Given the way so many singers roll all over the chromatic map of the USA anthem on long notes, it pretty much becomes a new tune every time it is sung.
I don’t think the lyrics are lacking at all. I don’t quite understand the “for” construction, but I’ll let it slide under poetic license. Besides that, the words are great! And how about everybody’s favorite verse:
America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!*
That modicum of humility is welcome.
On the downside, it does have numerous references to God, which might be problematic.
This debate is paralleled in Australia, and I have strong feelings on it. Advance Australia Fair is a rather turgid, dull anthem that belongs in high schools and sporting events. On the other hand, Waltzing Matilda is the one that will bring a tear if I’m overseas and I hear it. But does that mean Waltzing Matilda should be our anthem? Hell NO! The national anthem is SUPPOSED to be dull.
America the Beautiful is really, really lovely too. It’s your Waltzing Matilda. The American people own it, so don’t sell it to The Man. Don’t let the government dilute it with dull officialdom.
I say stick with the Star-Spangled Banner. For a better appreciation of it, read Asimov’s article http://www.purewatergazette.net/asimov.htm. And he was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.
The rest of the song is an idealized vision of what American can become. To me, that last line isn’t humble, but it’s like a schoolmarm wagging her finger at unruly students. So it’s my least favorite part of the song. It sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.
Not that self-control is bad. It’s good, of course. But I can’t recall it being recommended for individuals recently.
I know what it means, and I know it’s “O” (didn’t notice the typo in the OP), I just don’t understand the logic of the phrasing. If I saw a beautiful woman, I wouldn’t comment on her beauty by saying “O beautiful, for lucious lips, for nice figure, for pretty face…etc.” But I can accept that it’s an archaic and/or poetic sentence structure.
Billy Joel is how old? 137? If you want to hear the anthem sung right maybe they shouldn’t have hauled Grandpa out of the nursing home to sing it. By now, Billy Joel would have problems remembering which of his pills he’s supposed to take in the morning.
I can sing “The Star Spangled Banner” and I’m not even American. Honestly, it’s not hard to sing if you can sing at all.
Woody may have said that, but according to the U.S. Copyright Office, the work is under copyright:
Even your quote indicates that Guthrie copyrighted the work; he just was willing to allow others to sing it (not record it). At the time he was quoted, ASCAP didn’t cover folk music, so he wasn’t going to get any payment for performances, anyway.
It’s got an octave and a fifth range – not tough for anyone you’d want to invite to sing before a sporting event, but tough enough for your average non-singer. In other words, it’s not something large masses of regular people can easily sing, which is a bad sign for a national anthem.
It can’t be America the Beautiful; that would ruin The Westing Game.
I kind of like the fact that only screech owls can handle The Star Spangled Banner. Its imagery is vaguely bellicose, and that appeals to me. I don’t mind having an anthem that no one can really sing well, because when someone does manage it, I get chills. In comparison, My Country 'Tis of Thee is a schoolchild’s verse. No emotion.
