If you’ve spent more than a few minutes around me in person, you’ve probably heard me bitch about one of my two biggest pet peeves:

• people who say “due to the fact that”
• the way we’re performing the National Anthem at big sporting events

On the first one: we have the word “because” for a reason, people! Don’t pile on extra words if you aren’t also piling on extra content! At least don’t do it in front of me, because I will become irrationally violent and come right at you. (See how it works?) I have a similar event planned for those who say “at this point in time.”

Note to people who say “utilize”: you’re on the watch list.

With the Super Bowl upon us, it’s really the National Anthem I want to talk about. Remember when the only worries we had about the anthem was something like this happening?

RIP Mr. Nielsen.

The Star-Spangled Banner has always been a tough song to sing for most of us — if you select a key where you can hit the bottom notes, the top ones are out of reach and vice versa. You either need someone with a good voice or several thousand people singing it at once. At large sporting events, it’s typical to have both.

Or it was, until the anthem became a high-volume Diva-Powered Pissing Contest.

I blame Whitney Houston. When she sang this for Super Bowl XXV in 1991 (Giants 20, Buffalo 19 — be well, Scott Norwood), many people said it was the greatest version ever. I can only assume they measure greatness in decibels.

If you watch carefully, you can see the moment when Whitney’s brain meat passes its sell-by date. Before the Super Bowl, she was one of our national treasures. She taught us that the greatest love of all involved wanting to dance with somebody for one moment in time. After, she told us that crack is wack and married Bobby Brown. What was in that headband?

While I’m not claiming I can belt out the National Anthem any better, there are still a number of problems here.

Let us sing along

Everyone the stadium is standing with their hands on their hearts, intending to sing along. As they should, because this song belongs to all of us. It was written during a battle by a lawyer and set to the tune of a British drinking song. What could be more American than that? You wanted all 74,000 people in Tampa Stadium singing out their Americanhood. This was 1991 during the first Persian Gulf War. (Remember that one? We were in Iraq for SEVEN MONTHS!)

Unless Luciano Pavarotti was a big football fan, by the time Whitney was proudly hailing everyone else had shut up. Except John Madden, who was diagramming what her larynx was doing with his light pen.

Speed doesn’t always kill

Whitney’s anthem is twice as long as it should be. It should move along like a march; uplifting, militaristic, and bombastic, like America fancies itself to be. What it definitely is not is a dirge. Save the funeral marches for Wagner. (Much love to Herr Richard, by the way. If his music hadn’t made the Nazis goose-step so slowly, WWII might have been different.)

Whitney’s take is not as bad as many others I’ve heard, but she does linger on the power notes. There are some who treat each syllable like a Station of the Cross. It is damned exhausting.

If you don’t get to the last note within a minute after hitting the first note, you’ve missed the point and lost the crowd.

Experiment with your own damn songs

Not too get too esoteric with the musical lingo here, but the Banner is in 3/4 time. It should be moving at a march tempo, but it should be possible to waltz to it. I don’t know why you’d be dancing to the national anthem, but Americans sometime enjoy a Fame moment.

In Whitney’s rendition, she’s changed it to 4/4, adding another beat to each measure and making it 33% longer. I’m not filled with jingoistic outrage at her changing the melody, but it’s a little disrespectful and makes it even tougher for Luciano Pavarotti to sing along, sitting there with his expensive Scott Norwood jersey.

Whitney was just the beginning

Each new solo performance becomes another opportunity to fuck up our national anthem in the artist’s unique ways. I can understand them missing notes. I can even almost understand flubbing the lyrics. (Just because I knew them in second grade doesn’t mean Christina Aguilera has to know them.) I don’t quite understand putting your own interpretation when you could be leading tens of thousands of people along with you.

And I really don’t understand this one from Recent Shitty American Idol Winning Hack Country Singer Scotty McCreery at last year’s World Series. I don’t mean the microphone flub at the beginning. Skip ahead to about 1:20 if you want, and listen for a coded political commentary about amnesty for illegal immigrants.

At least he hit the notes. Or at least slid up and down past them. Still, the original twang-free lyrics have been around since 1814 — Scotty can tuck away his trademark speech impediment for a minute at these events. He won’t have to do it much longer, once everyone stops pretending he’s any good.

For the next Super Bowl, Kelly Clarkson is handling the national anthem duties. I actually like her, despite her being on American Idol. She’ll probably be okay with the words. If she blanks, I hope she panics and starts singing “My Life Would Suck Without You.”

A little slow and twangy, but not ridiculously so. Mostly singable if you jump octaves when necessary. And no name-checking poor Jose. By today’s standards, Kelly does an excellent job.

Therefore…

I don’t mind progress or change, but I also respect consistent ties to early history. Whether I’m standing in the spot where the top of Thomas Becket’s head fell or eating a Nutter Butter after donating blood, I am stubbornly maintaining important traditions, and life is richer for it. Rich enough to not be lost because of an affected lyrical gimmick. (You’re 18, McCreery. Don’t start slurring your words until you’re old enough to drink.)

I know I’m likely alone in this. That’s the beauty of pet peeves. The anthem should be an up-tempo waltz with clean articulation of the notes and words, ideally in the key of B-flat major. If we can’t agree on that, then maybe it’s time we picked a new anthem.

This post was sponsored by the Committee to Give Marching Bands Some Damn Respect. I’m a Sousaphone Player and I approve this message.