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NATIONAL ANTHEM SINGING: THE WORD NATIONAL ANTHEM PERFORMANCES ARE IMPROVISATIONS
You’ve probably heard pop stars perform over-the-top versions of your national anthem. Usually, such renditions ruin the anthem.
When some singer with no compositional know-how deviates from the classic tune of a great national anthem in an effort to “make it his (or her) own,” he or she is attempting to re-compose the tune on the fly, incompetently improvising. It’s the musical equivalent of painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
That said, occasionally a genuine musical genius comes along and succeeds in rendering a national anthem in an awe-inspiring, yet original way. Jimi Hendrix did it at the Woodstock music festival in 1969. But that’s rare.