a star-strangled anthem? you decide.

So the first thing I noticed today on Yahoo is that Steven Tyler is getting criticism over his rendition of the national anthem before the AFC championship game yesterday. I, personally, don't think it was that bad. Here's the video -- you decide for yourself:

Now, I'll admit this wasn't a standout performance. His voice wasn't beautiful. It was gravelly and he had trouble with the high notes. But, you know, if you hire Steven Tyler to sing the national anthem, you shouldn't be shocked that you get Steven Tyler singing the national anthem. He was appropriately respectful, and he didn't try to transform it by adding 48 gajillion extra syllables or changing the melody. My biggest objection was one minor mistake in the lyrics -- he changed the phrase "the bombs bursting in air" to "as bombs bursting in air.  Now, getting the words wrong is one of the things that really annoys me when people sing the anthem, so I should be bothered by it. But for some reason I see that as a minor slip that can be overlooked. Interestingly, that's exactly what some critics have done. Radar Online, for example, panned his performance but gave him credit for getting the words right.

There are lots of other anthem antics that annoy me more than anything Tyler did. But I'll leave that for another blog post. For now, I'll leave you to contemplate another pundit's list of the worst performances: