You know, it’s time for me to hit ‘play’ for the 52nd time and enjoy it again. It is the artist, and the woman, who give it its magic, over and over and over. If Houston had done this version at any other Super Bowl, in any other year, or had simply done it anywhere at any time, it would have grown to be our favorite version on its own. Having spent so much time with it, I’ve come to believe that the historical setting – at the Super Bowl during First Gulf War – matters less to its enduring fame than the artist and the artistry behind it. You can listen to the performance on YouTube, Spotify, Pandora or AppleMusic. That version was released as a single and made it as high as #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991, and then hit #1 in 2001 after 9/11. While she was singing live with an orchestra on the field, if you were watching at home, you probably heard the safety version (which the NFL now requires as a result of Garth Brooks’ fussy moment when he thought he was bigger than the song at Super Bowl XXVII). It’s what we mean when we talk about character. In the big moment, when everyone was watching, she put all of her artistry to work for something larger than any of us. That service has earned her not only the love, but the respect, of her fellow citizens then and forever. She is using all of her artistry in service to the song, in service to those parents in the stadium, in service to her country. She is not hamming it up, doing an unrecognizable hipster version, or directing attention towards herself. As magical, confident, and virtuoso as her performance is, it is never about the singer. Well, to show you my love for America, I’m going to polish it up for you, re-create it, and give it back to you new.”īecause, as much as it’s our favorite version, it’s still entirely, 100%, the Star-Spangled Banner. Whitney Houston re-invented the national anthem for her generation the way Hamilton reinvented Hamilton for ours, as if to say: “here’s another part of the glorious American epic, that you had remembered so much and so well, that you forgot all about it. The chills, the chuckles as you can’t believe what she’s creating, your eyes tearing up… it’s new every time. Every time you listen to Whitney Houston’s version of the Star-Spangled Banner, it’s the first time you’ve ever heard the song. There’s nothing I can share or say that isn’t in her voice or already in your heart.īut what I can tell you is that even after you listen to Whitney singing this version of the national anthem fifty times in a single weekend in order to write a newsletter about it, you love it even more the 51st time. That for two minutes she holds your heart in her fingers, takes you to the heavens with her on a story you thought you knew, and returns you to earth with your eyes misting and your heart in a lump in your throat? What can I tell you about listening to Whitney’s version that you haven’t already discovered for yourself?
WHITNEY HOUSTON NATIONAL ANTHEM FREE
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Whoa, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave She winds up, her entire body circling into the final, dizzying heights of her performance, with an unforgettable high note: She returns with power, intensity, majesty: I saw parents of young men and women who were over there in the Gulf and it just tripped me out, and I said: ‘this is for them.’”Īnd now in a softer voice… fleeting, almost fragile: I looked out amongst all the people and their faces. Walking out onto the field, Whitney later said, “to be really honest with you, I’m going into the day to sing the national anthem, and that’s all I’ve dealt with up until the very moment I stepped onto the platform. Clayton thought supporting Whitney “sounded exciting and fun, and I’d never done anything as widely viewed before.” He added the subtle jazz harmonies and groove that would give Whitney her launchpad.
WHITNEY HOUSTON NATIONAL ANTHEM PRO
Her long-time musical director Rickey Minor enlisted the help of John Clayton, a music industry pro comfortable in both the jazz and classical worlds, who had also been his bass teacher in college. So after agreeing to the gig, Whitney sent her team to get a backing orchestra to support her vision. Gaye had sung it in common time, which opened it up and gave him the space he needed to be the marvelous Marvin Gaye.
The original song is written in waltz time (SAY-can-you, SEE-by-the, DAWNS-ear-ly). She’d heard Marvin Gaye’s performance of the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star game, and liked it. Whitney had agreed in the Fall of 1990 to perform before the big game. We’d never followed war in real-time from our living rooms before, and it was America’s first full-scale war since Vietnam. The First Gulf War had started ten days earlier, introducing America to the 24-hour news cycle and catapulting CNN past the major broadcast networks for the first time.
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