Super Bowl XLV: Great Game, Bad Entertainment

Last night’s Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers was a great game. Anytime the game’s final 2 minutes matter usually indicates that you’ve seen a good, competitive game. What was lacking, unfortunately, were the performances by the various entertainers both before and after the game. America’s National Anthem was way over the top, so much so that it wasn’t even sung correctly, and the halftime show was, well, pretty terrible.

Christina Aguilera’s rendition of the National Anthem was not only hard to listen to, but part of the way through, I heard something that made me say, “WTF??” I looked around the room at everyone watching the Super Bowl, and everyone had that, “That didn’t sound right,” look on there faces. Here’s a pretty good description of her messed up line from the Star Spangled Banner:

When she was supposed to sing the line “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming,” Aguilera instead repeated an earlier line, with a slight variation. Aguilera sang “What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last gleaming,” which is the same line from earlier in the song but with the word ‘watched’ instead of ‘hailed’ and ‘reaming’ instead of ‘gleaming.’

Ugh. Seriously? I’ll own up and say that there’s no way I could sing that song (or any song for that matter), but at least I know all of the lines. And whatever happened to just singing it, and not trying to turn it into some bad R&B song? There are natural spots to drag out the notes, but those spots aren’t every other word. If you can stand it, here’s the performance, flub and all.

That brings us to the halftime show. First, I want to applaud the NFL for hiring an act that didn’t use their Senior Citizens Discount Card to buy concessions during the game. BUT, and it’s a big but, how about getting an act that can actually perform live in a stadium setting? I’ll add a disclaimer here that I’m not a big fan of the Black Eyed Peas or their style of music. However, their music is geared more towards being played from a CD at a club, not live in a stadium. Even Slash from Guns ‘N Roses couldn’t save the show. In fact, his appearance made things worse because that brought Fergie over to try and sing “Sweet Child of Mine.” I have no major issues with someone performing that song, but don’t try and sing it like Axl Rose. Only Axl Rose can sing it like Axl Rose. Fergie sounded like someone trying to do an impression of Axl Rose. Absolutely terrible.

Thank God the game was great because otherwise, it would have been a painful telecast to watch from top to bottom.