A sportswriter tries his hand at singing the national anthem at a baseball game:
The anthem is designed to humble you. The anthem is designed to ruin your shit if you get too haughty, and that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s ready to challenge you from the very beginning:
O say can you see …
That ‘see’ is tricky. That’s your first high note, and you have to sustain it for a second. You can tell whether or not an anthem is gonna suck usually by the time the singer has finished with just this line.
By the dawn’s early light / What so proudly we hailed …
Again, we have another trap. That high note on ‘proudly’ sneaks up on you, forcing you to jump up higher than many people are comfortable with.
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