The Soviet anthem is a fucking banger musically speaking. It’s got such a sense of grandiosity and epic tragedy.

America the Beautiful is better in every way. These section is just fabulous:

“Lots of bombs in the air” is where the wheels really start to come off, so I’ll go with that part.

Yeah that seems to be the problem, people start too high and leave themselves nowhere to go but embarrassment city.

“I’ve always said that a de-religioned “America the Beautiful” would be a much better national anthem. It’s a nice song and it wouldn’t take a lot of work to replace all the religious references.”

They should really lean into that...

Jon Stewart Isn’t Helping should be the name of his show

Not to mention that our national anthem is fucked. “Girt”? Girt?!?

I think part of this issue is that the music consuming public can usually only recognize volume, duration and range as praiseworthy attributes of a singer. All of the many, many other elements that make a good singer are ignored. So when vocalists want to impress a crowd they go loud and long and as low and high as…

I really enjoy seeing Jimmy’s real-life growth/arc, especially compared to his former garbage co-host. 

It also helps when your anthem is as good as Advance Australia Fair.

“Dirge” you say? Britain wants you to hold its beer.

I’m a Stars fan, so I’m fine with a (sorta) hometown crowd doing it here. But that's it.

Same with when something horrifically racist or violent occurs and you get that “this is not our country”. Yes it motherfucking is and even an incredibly cursory look at history will absolutely confirm that.

I hope it ends up plastered across YouTube someday. Not because I want to hear it, or care about sharing art or whatever, but because I want to see that shitbird Skreli and the crypto-wankers lose the ridiculously contrived exclusivity they paid way too much money for.

That one's really pretty great. Triumph from tragedy.

It’s a dumb little ritual we need to go through at the start of games

I think the best approach is have an old-timey ballpark organ play the accompaniment, have some rando cue the crowd with “Oh, say...”, then let the crowd and organist do the rest.  The quality will revert to the mean and all will be spared.

If duels were legal I would challenge you to a duel for invoking Cyndi Lauper’s name as having anything to do with this performance 

Why, in the name of all that is good in the world have most singers settled on dirge as the base for “making it their own” with the anthem? Did the US die or something (don’t answer that). Sing that sucker as if it’s actually celebrating something good.