Star-Spangled Whitney Houston

It was 31 years ago this week that Whitney Houston sang the greatest-ever performance of our national anthem

Always at the top of lists of best national anthem performances, Whitney Houston’s heady, rousing version was performed 31 years ago this week at Super Bowl XXV on January 27th, 1991.

I was happy to find this new recording, cleaned up and in 4K, available on YouTube, replacing the scratchy amateur copy that’s been available for years. [Note July 2022: the new recording disappeared due to copyright issues, so we’re back to the scratchy version!]

The First Gulf War had started ten days earlier, introducing America to the 24-hour news cycle and catapulting CNN past the major broadcast networks for the first time.  We’d never followed war in real-time from our living rooms before, and it was America’s first full-scale war since Vietnam.  The country was on edge.

Whitney had agreed in the Fall of 1990 to perform before the big game.  She’d heard Marvin Gaye’s performance of the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star game, and liked it.  The original song is written in waltz time (SAY-can-you, SEE-by-the, DAWNS-ear-ly).  Gaye had sung it in common time, which opened it up and gave him the space he needed to be the marvelous Marvin Gaye.  So after agreeing to the gig, Whitney sent her team to get a backing orchestra to support her vision.

Her long-time musical director Rickey Minor enlisted the help of John Clayton, a music industry pro comfortable in both the jazz and classical worlds, who had also been his bass teacher in college.  Clayton thought supporting Whitney “sounded exciting and fun, and I’d never done anything as widely viewed before.” He added the subtle jazz harmonies and groove that would give Whitney her launchpad. 

Walking out onto the field, Whitney later said, “to be really honest with you, I’m going into the day to sing the national anthem, and that’s all I’ve dealt with up until the very moment I stepped onto the platform.  I looked out amongst all the people and their faces.  I saw parents of young men and women who were over there in the Gulf and it just tripped me out, and I said: ‘this is for them.’”

She starts calm, forceful, honest:

Oh say, can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming?

And now in a softer voice… fleeting, almost fragile:

Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched,
Were so gallantly streaming?

She returns with power, intensity, majesty:

And the rockets' red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there

She winds up, her entire body circling into the final, dizzying heights of her performance, with an unforgettable high note:

Whoa, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

What can I tell you about listening to Whitney’s version that you haven’t already discovered for yourself? 

That for two minutes she holds your heart in her fingers, takes you to the heavens with her on a story you thought you knew, and returns you to earth with your eyes misting and your heart in a lump in your throat?

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Every time you listen to Whitney Houston’s version of the Star-Spangled Banner, it’s the first time you’ve ever heard the song.

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There’s nothing I can share or say that isn’t in her voice or already in your heart.  

But what I can tell you is that even after you listen to Whitney singing this version of the national anthem fifty times in a single weekend in order to write a newsletter about it, you love it even more the 51st time.  Every time you listen to Whitney Houston’s version of the Star-Spangled Banner, it’s the first time you’ve ever heard the song. The chills, the chuckles as you can’t believe what she’s creating, your eyes tearing up… it’s new every time.

Whitney Houston re-invented the national anthem for her generation the way Hamilton reinvented Hamilton for ours, as if to say: “here’s another part of the glorious American epic, that you had remembered so much and so well, that you forgot all about it.  Well, to show you my love for America, I’m going to polish it up for you, re-create it, and give it back to you new.”

What a wonderful gift!

Because, as much as it’s our favorite version, it’s still entirely, 100%, the Star-Spangled Banner.   As magical, confident, and virtuoso as her performance is, it is never about the singer.  She is not hamming it up, doing an unrecognizable hipster version, or directing attention towards herself. She is using all of her artistry in service to the song, in service to those parents in the stadium, in service to her country.

That service has earned her not only the love, but the respect, of her fellow citizens then and forever. In the big moment, when everyone was watching, she put all of her artistry to work for something larger than any of us. It’s what we mean when we talk about character.

While she was singing live with an orchestra on the field, if you were watching at home, you probably heard the safety version (which the NFL now requires as a result of Garth Brooks’ fussy moment when he thought he was bigger than the song at Super Bowl XXVII).

That version was released as a single and made it as high as #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991, and then hit #1 in 2001 after 9/11.  You can listen to the performance on YouTube, Spotify, Pandora or AppleMusic.

Having spent so much time with it, I’ve come to believe that the historical setting – at the Super Bowl during First Gulf War – matters less to its enduring fame than the artist and the artistry behind it.

If Houston had done this version at any other Super Bowl, in any other year, or had simply done it anywhere at any time, it would have grown to be our favorite version on its own.

It is the artist, and the woman, who give it its magic, over and over and over.

You know, it’s time for me to hit ‘play’ for the 52nd time and enjoy it again. I know you will too.

Let’s grow,

Marc
Follow me on twitter: @cenedella