"Artistic" Liberties

This is probably an understatement, but I watch a lot of sports. Just last year, I've been to 21 Toronto Blue Jays games. Then there's all the televised games of both baseball and non-baseball I've seen... the point is, for every full game I've watched, I've heard an anthem singer sing. That's a heck of a lot of anthems sung. In fact, if it wasn't for all the sports opening every game with anthems, I wonder how often I'd actually hear the anthems outside of Canada Day, Independence Day, etc.

I've only been around since 1980, but I am sure that at some point in history, anthems were sung the way they were intended to be sung the vast majority of the time. For that matter, there may or may not have even been a time where the anthems were sung as intended all of the time. Occasionally, a singer would choose to change a note, a bar, or some other bit of the anthem and it would be accepted as an artistic liberty.

These days, I find that over 90% of the games I watch, the anthem has been butchered by the singer because the singer chose not to sing the anthem as it was intended... and that 90% is probably even a conservative estimate! (Then again, there was that one game I went to where William Hung was the "singer" and he didn't intentionally put any artistic liberties in, but it sure as heck didn't sound like the anthem was supposed to sound like!) I think we've reached a point where it has become normal for the song to be sung incorrectly. I understand the concept of artistic liberties and why some people choose to use them, but I find it's rare that an artistic liberty actually helps the anthem singer in question.

Tonight was the 2005 NBA All Star game and the singer singing the Canadian anthem - surprise! - used artistic liberty and mangled parts of it. Obviously the camera was on the singer, but I bet if we panned over to Steve Nash, he'd probably have flinched just like any other good Canadian was probably doing on those notes. Thankfully, when the Admiral brought the choir in to sing the US anthem, they didn't take any liberties and the song sounded amazing. They really did an excellent job. Would it have sounded better if they had taken a liberty? Who knows? Sometimes it sounds nice and sometimes it doesn't, but although anthem singers have proven to us that they're generally willing to take that chance, I really appreciate that this group didn't.

Hopefully, some of these anthem singers will watch replays of the game that include the anthems they sang. Then they can hear just how badly the anthems were mangled. Maybe then, some of them will figure out that the anthems really do sound nice the way they were meant to be sung.