[Editor's Note: this entry originally appeared here on 7/4/2007, and was written by one of our former contributors who gave us permission to run it once again. It's one of our favorites.]

(This post has a soundtrack too – “Our National Anthem”, by Negativland, from 1993′s Free album. Click here to listen or download.

When someone says the word “America”, chances are that one of the things that comes to mind is The Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem. Its notoriously difficult melody has been known to bring even the most talented singers to their knees. There have been some very memorable and moving performances of it (Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, Whitney Houston at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, even Jimi Hendrix’ interpretation at Woodstock) and, well, some not so memorable (Roseanne Barr and Hillary Clinton [whose own ridiculous-bordering-on-sublime interpretation seems to have fallen down the memory hole - Ed.] certainly come to mind, not to mention every third-rate pop and R&B singer who have this strange tendency to perform it with ridiculous amounts of melisma, and if I can find a clip of Pat Buchanan singing “God Bless America” – “from the vountins, to the fairies” – from a few years ago, I’ll link to that too for good measure).

A lot of people don’t realize that it was originally written as a drinking song! More info below the jump.
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