Music Lyrics Blog

Billy Joel at Super Bowl Sings "The Star-Spangled Banner"

It may be Super Bowl Sunday, with Prince leading the halftime show as the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears battle for top honors in Miami, but Billy Joel has his own important task to do. “Don’t forget the words,” Joel is quoted as saying.

Billy Joel will open up Super Bowl XLI (that's 41 to you and me) by singing "The Star-Spangled Banner", kicking off the internationally viewed competition. At ballgames and other events, most people only sing the first stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner” so as a matter of public service, I will present the entire lyrics to the song here:

The Star-Spangled Banner

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early lights,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen thro’ the mist of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
’Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.


Now, I wonder if Francis Scott Key ever sang off-key when belting out the lyrics to his own song? If not, then its more than likely he did forget some of the words.

posted by Muse Dog @ 9:45 AM