Is singing your national anthem badly a disservice to it?

[Vegosiux]

Okay, so, I was working on another gridiron football game live broadcast last night, and the guys that were singing the national anthem of the USA before the game were doing it worse than I would have done, the cacophony made my head hurt. I have no problem with the anthem being sung before a sports event, even if I'm not a fan of displays of patriotism, but if it's done badly like that, well...

It just has to be asked.

Do you consider it a disservice to the symbol of your nation if someone swings it around as if it was a dead cat and trying to make it look good?

 

[Dags90]

The U.S.A. has a particularly hard to sing national anthem, it requires a very large vocal range. Without enormous innate talent, to not do it disservice would require extensive training. Professional singers struggle with it.

 

[Vault101]

I'd say not knowing the words is more of a disservice too it, I know the second verse of the australian anthem when 90% of aussies don't!

HA!

TBH I find we as a nation can be kind of "anti-foregner" at times which is funny since our anthem sings:

[quote/]for those whove come across the seas,weve boundless plains to share
with courage let us all combine to advance australia fair[/quote]
not that itmeans anything but still

 

[Vuliev]

I think singing anything badly is a disservice to the song, even to shitty ones (because why make a bad thing worse?)

 

[ohnoitsabear]

The U.S.A. has a particularly hard to sing national anthem, it requires a very large vocal range. Without enormous innate talent, to not do it disservice would require extensive training. Professional singers struggle with it.

It doesn't help that the standard way of preforming it is at a ridiculously slowed down tempo. So not only do you have to hit some of those crazy notes, but you also have to hold them for quite a long time.

Anyway, I have to agree with Vault101, knowing the words is more important than being able to sing it well. Because there are some people out there who can't sing anything well (me), so are they not supposed to sing it at all under any circumstances? I don't think so.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

The Australian national anthem is a disservice to itself, regardless of how badly it can be sung.

 

[Rawne1980]

Thats why I love our UK national anthem.

It's as if it was designed to be sung by drunken football fans .... who don't know the words.

Which works for me when i'm pissed and watching an England match, I can sing along.

The sad part is we have a boring as fuck national anthem. I prefer Rule Britannia.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

The majority of Singaporeans don't even remember the Anthem. Of small percentage that does (mainly schoolkids), majority of them don't know what it means (because it's entirely in Malay), pronounce the words all wrong and basically make a big mess of it.

So far, the only people I've seen who don't flub it are Malays and Malaysians who've moved here. Like... yikes.

 

[Zhukov]

I doubt I could care less about the Australian national anthem or how people sing it.

I don't even remember the words anymore. Not even the first verse. There's a bit about "golden soil and wealth for toil" and apparently "our home is girt by sea".

Eh, it's a shitty song anyway.

EDIT: Here, I found a video.


See what I mean? It's just pure wank.

 

[Fatboy_41]

I doubt I could care less about the Australian national anthem or how people sing it.

I don't even remember the words anymore. Not even the first verse. There's a bit about "golden soil and wealth for toil" and apparently "our home is girt by sea".

Eh, it's a shitty song anyway.

EDIT: Here, I found a video.


See what I mean? It's just pure wank.

I dunno what you're on about... THIS is our Anthem...

 

[No social life]

The U.S.A. has a particularly hard to sing national anthem, it requires a very large vocal range. Without enormous innate talent, to not do it disservice would require extensive training. Professional singers struggle with it.

At least it only uses one language, the South African anthem uses several.

 

[Ferisar]

Uh... I don't think I have an opinion on the matter. Couldn't give less a damn about the U.S. anthem, even if I live here. It's just dull. When people mess it up, it's not so much as depressing that they screwed it up as much as it's easy to poke fun at.

I do know that my national anthem is better than yours, though.

 

[Joccaren]

I'd say not knowing the words is more of a disservice too it, I know the second verse of the australian anthem when 90% of aussies don't!

HA!

TBH I find we as a nation can be kind of "anti-foregner" at times which is funny since our anthem sings:

[quote/]for those whove come across the seas,weve boundless plains to share
with courage let us all combine to advance australia fair

not that itmeans anything but still[/quote]
Well, to be fair, how often do we actually sing the second verse?
Even when we hosted the Olympics/Commonwealth I'm not even sure we did, it just seems to be something everyone ignores. Its also kinda rare to hear it sung with much enthusiasm, at least where I live. Wouldn't hurt us to have something a bit more lively and casual IMO, would kinda suit our tendency to not take things seriously.

 

[Vault101]

Well, to be fair, how often do we actually sing the second verse?
Even when we hosted the Olympics/Commonwealth I'm not even sure we did, it just seems to be something everyone ignores. Its also kinda rare to hear it sung with much enthusiasm, at least where I live. Wouldn't hurt us to have something a bit more lively and casual IMO, would kinda suit our tendency to not take things seriously.

like waltzing matilda? I'm not sure folk songs qualify for national anthems..but yeah

Advance Australia fair as a real droning tune, trying to make it sung "well" (belted out like an idol contestant) doesn't make it any better..in fact it makes it worse

 

[Lizardon]

Well if the person was singing badly on purpose to make fun of the song/country, yeah I can see how that could be offensive to some.

But if person isn't a very good singer (like me) then it's not really fair to say that they can't sing the anthem just because they're not very good at it. The same goes for any covers/remix of the anthem. If there's no malice behind it, then by all means go for it.

At my graduation here in Australia, the music class performed the anthem. My grandma got offended by how they did it at a faster tempo and kinda made it sound more like a rock song I guess, it's kinda hard to describe over text. It's normally very dry and slow, which apparently is the "proper" way and anything else is an insult. I believe that was the only time I ever told her to shut up =D

I dunno what you're on about... THIS is our Anthem...

I'm glad someone else knows what the real Aussie national anthem sounds like.

Crap, I'm going to have that stuck in my head for the rest of the day now. Oh well.

 

[88chaz88]

Thats why I love our UK national anthem.

It's as if it was designed to be sung by drunken football fans .... who don't know the words.

Which works for me when i'm pissed and watching an England match, I can sing along.

The sad part is we have a boring as fuck national anthem. I prefer Rule Britannia.

Our national anthem is also the only one I know to contain racism. It wins for that reason alone.

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save the King.

 

[Joccaren]

like waltzing matilda? I'm not sure folk songs qualify for national anthems..but yeah

Its the most likely candidate thanks to the fact that more people probably know more of it than our actual national anthem, though something that I'd love to see, even just for the fact that a lot of the more conservative people would probably have a fit over it, is something like Men at Work's Land Down Under, or Working Class Man as suggested earlier in the thread as our anthem. I don't see any reason we couldn't, bar the conservative people throwing a fit if we did, and the likely royalties the nation would have to pay, but they kinda suit the nation TBH. Laid back and casual, you can sing them if you're drunk and don't really know the words, and you can put enthusiasm in if you want to and have at least a few people sounding good, even if overall it will end up sounding like a bunch of drunks down at the pub. I don't really see why we need such bland, formal and somewhat pretentious songs as our national anthems TBH, it really is a wasted effort.

Advance Australia fair as a real droning tune, trying to make it sung "well" (belted out like an idol contestant) doesn't make it any better..in fact it makes it worse

Indeed. You can put enough enthusiasm in it to make it not sound like a funeral dirge, but that's about it, and even that's rare to find.

 

[Magic Murder Bag]

I always do a disservice to my anthem, it's just at completely the wrong pitch for my vocal range (it's not my terrible terrible singing voice that's the problem at all) Still satisfying to drunkenly belt out that first part of the second verse at the pub though!


I agree with Vault, getting the words wrong does more of a disservice than just singing it badly:


It would have been better if he'd just kept his mouth shut.

 

[Arakasi]

I refuse to sing my national anthem.
It's not that I oppose the values presented in the song, but I strongly oppose the nationalism that it implies.