There’s nothing worse than a mangled “Star-Spangled Banner”

By Tom Comi

It’s been said by many performers that “The Star-Spangled Banner is one of the most difficult songs to sing in terms of range and lyrics, and the latter was certainly proven when Christina Aguilera unintentionally altered the words in front of 111 million TV viewers before Sunday’s Super Bowl.

And while we don’t want to pile on Aguilera (who admitted afterwards that she feels awful), there certainly is a history both fictional and real about the wrong and right way to sing the song. We begin this trip down Memory Lane with the standard bearer for how it should be done, and the honor goes to Whitney Houston for her 1991 rendition before the Super Bowl. And even though there were rumors that it was pre-recorded, it has yet to be and most likely never will be duplicated.

And now just to show that Aguilera has company, here are some of the worst versions ever performed:

If we learned one thing from Olympic Gold medal winner Carl Lewis other than the fact that he was brilliantly fast, it’s that he can not and should not sing. I think it’s fair to say he learned that the hard way after this 1993 rendition of the National Anthem before an NBA game.

Rock bottom, though, will always be Rosanne’s off-tune and unfunny interpretation before a San Diego Padres game in 1990. Not only did she scream the entire song, but then she made matters worse when she attempted at the end of the song to mimic a baseball player by grabbing her crotch and spitting toward the ground. The only in-key portion of the night was the chorus of boos that accompanied her “performance.”

And because we love movies and parodies, we will end with the funniest version ever performed. It was by the late Leslie Nielsen in the comedy Naked Gun, and it featured his character (police lieutenant Frank Drebin) standing in for opera singer Enrico Pallazzo before a baseball game.