OT - Worst. Anthem. EVER.
Before today's futbol friendly between the US and Scotland, a young lady named Victoria Zarlenga sang the national anthem. At least, for a certain definition of "sang."
Francis Scott Key just shat himself in his grave.
The song is a tough one to sing, given the range required and...okay. No. I can't do it. That was awful. God awful.
I know it's a tough song and all... but you would think that she would hit at least ONE note correctly, if only by accident.
Almost seemed like a prank. I half expected Ashton Kutcher to walk out onto the field and tell the crowd they were punked. She doesn't have a bad voice, but it was like she was missing notes intentionally.
I thought Justin Bieber is doing Punked now. BIEBER FEVER!
If a right note is surrounded by wrong notes on every side, then it will sound wrong also.
A note can only sound right relative to its neighbors, ie, the neighboring notes need be right for the pitch relationships to sound right.
Or, to put it another way, if you had perfect pitch, you might find that she DID hit ONE correctly, but that only someone who knows A=440 hz when they hear it would have any way to know without other correct notes for reference.
They compared her voice favorably with that of the star of the film "The Hills Have Eyes".
"Flower of Scotland" was also murdered by that shitty five-piece pipe band that looked like they met in the parking lot.
I would think that they would make the singers audition. That was just terrible.
She was proud of it too.
just b/c you have a rack doesn't mean u can sing.
That hasn't stopped Katy Perry. Bless you Katy.
I laughed. I cried. I bled from the ears.
When the topic is singing that I can honestly say, "Hey, I can do that!". However, I usually torture just a few people near me during the anthem. Then there was the guy next to me at a Go-Gos concert at Ravinia last summer that truly tortured me...
I mean, it was terrible. But I was seriously expected some comedy. If you're gonna say "Worst Anthem Ever," it's gotta beat this:
She's one of those celebrities, who, when you hear about their drug overdose/ bankruptcy/ 5th divorce/ assault on paparazzi/ DUI conviction, you don't say "That's too bad"... you just kind of smile inside a little bit.
-Herm
At first, I figured that girl was just some actor or whatever, but it turns out she's actually supposed to be a professional singer! WHAT?!? Surely there are other attractive women who can sing better than her. Roseanne is Roseanne. That's about what I'd expect from her, but this...
Her front hurts.
Now my ears hurt (eyes too dammit.)
No Snickers can fix that!
Just to wash everyone's ears clean of that absolute atrocity...here's my favorite version of the Anthem ever performed. Say what you will about Whitney Houston...but this performance gives me the chills EVERY time.
Not to ruin anything about how great of a rendition this was, but, it wasn't live. Previously recorded and lip-sung. A little FYI I learned not long ago.
Where did you hear that? Regardless of the answer I'm going to pretend this comment never happened but it looked pretty believable if it was a recording.
From my understanding the NFL requested that she pre- record this version in the event that something unforseeable took place. However, she still sang that version from what i was told in one take. It wasn't done over and over and chopped and corrected.
Yes, this. If I remember correctly it was not chopped and made perfect. But it was still a recording.
I think it was on Drew and Mike that I heard about it.
But it was still her voice; and if you look carefully, even though she was lip syncing (or more likely, singing into the microphone but having her voice replaced in the audio feed by the recording) she completely NAILS it, right down to the vibrato gestures. Legend has it that recording engineers had difficulty "doubling" her voice because her singing was so precise that it would sound too identical to the prior take.
More ear-bleach, with my personal favorite rendition.
I still think The Fray at the NCAA Bball championship was worse.
I'm too afraid to listen to it. Stuff like this really bothers me.
I think she was just softening up the crowd for that game, sometime in the future, when Skrillex does the National Anthem. It will sound great in comparison.
I would take Dubstep over The Fray any. day. of. the. week.
Either way, just sing the damn song like how its supposed to be sung, you do not need to make it unique.
Ooooooooooh SAY (wub wub wub) CAN (wub wub wub) YOU (wub wub wub wub wub) SEE WUBUBUBUBUBWUBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZCHKCHKCHKWUBBBBBBB!
I'd listen to it. The whole point of America is that we have the freedom to do things like that.
Thank goodness for her it was just during soccer game. If it was any other sport and Americans would've cared.
I couldn't make it all the way through that. Awful.
Neither could I. Also, something about her butchering the anthem on Memorial Day weekend makes it even worse.
I hope someone tells her she can't sing for shit.
I am told that every year the School of Music, Theatre & Dance has people show up at auditions having had glowing recommendations about their ability--and they are dreadful. Vocal, instrumental, the gamut. It's not just nerves, they really are not proficient, but no one has ever told them.
Having just graduated from medical school, I ought to know whether or not "tone deaf" is a colloquialism, dysphemism, or, like, a real actual thing. But I don't. Regardless that, I listened to the rendition. And while I didn't find it especially good, I thought it was decent or average. Not average as in the middle-spot among celebrity singers, but average as in this would be the result if one of the better voices in an average family sung the anthem. If I had a girlfriend and she sung the anthem like that, I would still totally have congratulatory sex with her afterward.
is the flip side of the concept of "talent." Most people, for various reasons, chose to mystify and mythologize "talent," which is another word for "ability," which, in music, is usually a combination of aptitude and devoted, persistent, diligent toil.
Those who fail to achieve at the highest level prefer to think of the outcome as the result of disparities in some recondite, mystically bestowed "gift"; and from the time of Paganini, audiences looking for a good show prefer to think that they are witnessing some freakish abberation in the natural order of things rather than the outcome of painstaking devotion.
You may not be tone deaf, merely forgiving. And being "forgiving" and "congratulatory" with a girlfriend is hardly to be faulted, especially if she has breasts like Victoria Zarlenga.
But it wasn't very good music.
That was bad, but there are many more that are way worse. Christina Aguilera at the 2011 Super Bowl comes to mind, and I'm not even talking about the missed lyrics.
To remember Carl Lewis' rendition...
"RED GLARE!!"
gets really good after the 0:45 mark.
Actually, FSK had nothing to do with the music.
The traduced composers were members of the Anacreontic Society, possibly headed up by John Stafford Smith.
Here is an instrumentally accompanied rendition of the original opus; the singer isn't terribly preoccupied with consonants, but the lyrics from the YouTube description are below:
To Anacreon in Heav'n, where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent in a petition
That he their Inspirer and patron would be;
When this answer arriv'd from the Jolly Old Grecian "Voice, fiddle and flute, "no longer be mute,
"I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot,
"And, besides, I'll instruct you, like me, to intwine
"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."(...)
Ye Sons of Anacreon, then join hand in hand;
Preserve unanimity, friendship and love!
'Tis yours to support what's so happily plann'd;
You've the sanction of Gods and the fiat of Jove. While thus we agree Our toast let it be:
"May our club flourish happy, united and free!
"And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine
"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."
Did Lewis really skip over half the song there (from "can you see" to "And the rockets' red glare") or were those the "highlights" of the song?
It got a lot worse...
Ok, to be honest, I only listened to 15 seconds so I'm not sure how bad the whole thing was. I literally couldn't subject myself to listening to any more. One big UGHHHH!
Those of you saying that wasn't so bad need your ears checked. That was beyond awful. I'm not sure she hit a single right note in the entire song.
If that woman thinks she is a a professional singer, she needs a new line of work, like starting tuesday morning. Because she might just be the worst professional singer in history. Most moderately talented amatures sound better than that. Hell, most karoke singers at a bar sound better than that.
EDIT: It is possible that her earpiece was malfunctioning, causing her to not hear herself properly and therefore not be able to sing the proper notes. Normally I wouldn't say that wasn't likely, but it is really really hard to suck as bad as she did if you have functioning ears. Even most untalented singers can at least hit SOME right notes.
but not the worst.
That wasn't anything CLOSE to the worst rendition of the anthem. This isn't even sniffing the top ten or twenty. Carl Lewis? Rosanne? Christina Agulera? All FAR worst than this.
...and at the end, the only question that came to mind was, "Would Jamie Farr or Jaye P. Morgan have waited the minimum 45 seconds before gonging this act?"
I don't think that I could have - I would have much preferred the surprise appearance of Gene Gene The Dancing Machine singing the National Anthem to this. Having said this, I will admit that this is not the worst rendition I have ever heard, but just to contrast this with a surprisingly decent performance from someone you may not expect, here's Bob Saget (not the best ever, but certainly not terrible) -
...than I could sing it. Surround her with a band and she is right in there with some rockers we have argued about on this here blog. About as pitchy as Phillip Phillips.