I don’t care if the melody IS from an old drinking song. Back when I was in the service I was able to hear national anthems from many other countries than ours right after. Perhaps I’m biased but ours just sounds better, different, bolder somehow. To hear this song sung badly just makes me sick.

But the “me” generation founded this country, well some of them anyway, the rest were indentured but one could argue that even these wanted to make a better life for *themselves*, it beat debtors prison.

BTW…

"To Anacreon in Heaven, where he fat in full glee,
A few fons of Harmony fent a petition,
That He their Infpirer and Patron would be;
When this anfwer arrived from the Jolly Old Grecian
Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,
no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my Name and infpire you to boot,
And, befides, I'll infruct you like me to entwine
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

Kind of catchy…

Looks like you spilled soda into your keyboard; it's typing efs where there should be esses.

:-)

First, let me say I agree with you entirely, our country is full of self-serving egomaniacs who believe getting turned down for a job by The Donald is TV worthy. On a tangent, however, I have to add that our anthem, in my opinion, is one of the worst I've ever heard. I can get past it being an English drinking song. What I don't like is it doesn't relate to anything anyone in America knows. It's in over-poetic language about a minor battle in a war Americans know little to nothing about, beside what they learned in a Johnny Horton song. I'd much rather have something like 'America the Beautiful', 'Stars and Stripes Forever', or 'My Country tis of Thee', although the first one is the best by far.

As a little trivia, here's the other verses of our National Anthem:

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 tower 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,
For our cause it is just,
And this be our motto--
"In God is our trust."
.
And the star-spangled banner
in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free,
and the home of the brave.

It may be of note that "the way it was written" has slowly changed across the years. The rhythms, and even the characteristic "ta--ta-da" dotted eighth/sixteenth pickup beat that we all think of as characteristic of the Anthem, were not present or written in stone in early ARRANGEMENTS. This is the key word-arrangement. The Anthem is the melody and words which a creative arranger can make into something even more beautiful and unexpected, such as the extended jazz harmonies, meter changes, and coda that the arranger for Beyonce's performamce added. You might check out our National Anthem throuhout history.
http://www.1stbrigadeband.org/SSB.html

I don't give a rat's ass. If Beyonce — or her arranger, if you must — wants extended jazz harmonies, meter changes and codas, let them write original music with that stuff.

If you want to put a personal stamp on something, do it to your own music. Not our nation's anthem.